


Special Deliveries

by CharlieJF



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Banking and Finance, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Goblins, Gringotts Wizarding Bank, Muggle/Wizard Relations, Owl Post (Harry Potter), Post-Canon, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Worldbuilding, the gold standard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:33:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22085704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharlieJF/pseuds/CharlieJF
Summary: Edward wasn't expecting to have to work with owls when he got a job at the Post Office.Ans the royal mail's accounting auditors are tearing their hair out trying to figure out payments in nuts sickles and galleons
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38





	1. Chapter 1

## Prologue

Rain spattered the window, casting the city into a rippling impressionist study of meaningless grey. Beyond the window, the early evening was broken by occasional flashes of light. What had been contained first to the tube station, then Canada square was now deep inside the building. Sean could watch its progress in the reflections from the surrounding buildings,and knew it wouldn’t be long now. He sipped from the mug in his hand, the coffee long gone cold and heavily diluted with expensive whiskey.

Where had it gone so wrong? Looking back on the path that led here there was nothing that he could point to that was objectively a bad move. Morally wrong, possibly, illegal? Eh, but it was all a part of the game.

There was a scream from somewhere nearby, this floor probably. The phone on the desk chirped and he stared at it dumbly for a second before hitting the speaker button.

“Yes?”

“Uh, Mr Sands?” the voice on the other end of the line was tremulous, “there’s some, uh, men here to see you.”

“Very good, send them in would you?”

There was the crunch of heavy, booted feet on broken glass, then a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Sean said.

His ears flashed in pain as a small explosion tore the door from its hinges and propelled it across the room. Three men followed it, at a more casual pace. The feet were booted, the coats were long and the hands each held slender pieces of intricately carved wood.

“Now then,” Sean said, “There’s no need to be hasty, I can explain everything!”

## Chapter 1

They always said that your first job after university would be shit. Like it was some kind of right of passage so that later in life you get to look back on your first six months or so after graduation, and quietly pat yourself on the back saying that you know what it’s like to work in a role that’s ill-paid and menial. Therefore nobody can ever accuse you of being some kind of disconnected elite twat because you know, man, you were there, you got to be on the front lines of shitty jobs therefore you’re inoculated from ever having to think about how well off you are because gosh darn it you “had” worked your way up from the bottom.

That’s what Edward tried to focus on as he looked around the cold dimly lit building. It was brick and concrete built sometime pre war probably, sheer walls rising up to almost ceiling level and crowned with a ring of wood-framed pane-glass windows. From back in the day when the abiding philosophy of architecture was that, under no circumstances, should people be given a chance to see anything other than the work in front of them lest they become idlers, endlessly gazing out into the great beyond. The building was too big to heat and a significant portion of the glass panes had been broken years ago by local kids or some other wild animals, so the biting January air was pretty much the same inside as out. Aside from the smell that is.

“So, is this like a pigeon coop then?” he asked.

“Aye that’s about right lad. Just don’t let the postmaster hear you talking like that, they can get a bit particular about names for things.”

“Oh, really?”

“Aye, to them upstairs they’re very particular, yes, and this,” the woman gestured to the room before them, “this is an eyrie.”

“An eyrie as in… for owls?”

As if to make a point, somewhere high above them came a soft ‘ooh-ooh’.

“So, the Royal Mail still make use of… carrier...”

“Owls? Yes. You know, like pigeons but with the big eyes and a good deal stupider.”

A rustling of feathers came from above.

“OK, carrier owls then?”

“Yes,” the woman said, “I mean, strictly speaking most of them aren’t Royal Mail’s property, but we maintain the facilities so that people who use them can… oh what’s the phrase they use… interface effectively with the larger postal infrastructure.”

“I...see.”

“Yeah, I know, bit antiquated right? But you’d be amazed how many people still use this old stuff. It’s like, we’ve still got a private railway running under part of central London.”

“What, a private… like a tube line?”

“Yes, and up here we’ve got...this,” again she gestured to the room. “So, that’s where you get to begin making what management calls a ‘valuable contribution’ to the running of the organisation.”

She handed Edward a broom that could have pre-dated the building they were standing in and a dustpan that probably started life as part of the accoutrements of a wood-burning stove.

“Tea break’s at nine if you’re not done by then. After this we’ll get you started on learning the post codes.”

***

“How was your first day at the new job then Edward?” his father asked over dinner.

“Ah, not too bad I suppose. They had me sweeping up for half the morning, then they started me on sorting parcels.”

“Parcels eh? Hadn’t realised they still did them, I thought the private sector had taken all their business.” said Jim, Esward’s brother.

Edward shrugged his shoulders.

“Are those socks doing any good, for keeping your warm son?” his mother asked.

“Aye, alright mum, I mean they say that the cold will always get to you no matter how much you wrap yourself up.”

“Long-johns,” has father said, stabbing a finger into the air excitedly. “That’s what the lads who part-timed in the TA used to tell me, everyone always focuses on wrapping up their top-half and then go about with just a pair of trousers on. Here, son, want me to have a look see if I can find you one of my old pairs?”

“No, it’s alright dad,” Edward said, smiling, “I’m only meant to do the sweeping first thing, I’m in the sorting office the rest of the time. They don’t treat us too bad.”

“Aye well see that that don’t change when they take the company public,” father said, voice shifting to affectionate concern.

“Oh I shouldn’t think that’ll be an issue,” Jim said.

“Oh no? What makes you so sure?” their father asked.

“Oh it doesn’t make sense to go alienating a skilled and experienced workforce.” Jim said, “you’d be amazed how often I see it happening. Someone takes over a company, sacks about a quarter of the staff, loses another quarter to walk-outs, early retirement and head-hunting, then is astounded when the folk that are left-over can’t run things better than when they were at full complement.”

“Wasn’t that what happened to you father?” Edward asked, mouth half full of jacket potato.

“Ah, no, my early retirement was a matter of principal.”

“The principle being that your father wanted to spend more time with family than with angry men in suits,” their mother added.

“Thing is,” Jim continued, “what they lose when they take over and act like asses, is they lose the people that actually know how it all works.”

“The strategy people you mean? Or like the engineers?”

Jim laughed, “No, not that. That’s all the stuff that’s on the level, that everyone knows is important. I mean the people who are working on the shop floor and take care of all the little things that make the thing work, deal with the problems that never make it up to the higher levels. You mark my words Eddie,” Jim poked his fork towards his younger brother, “if you want to really make a difference in your job, if you really wanna be indispensable, you have a good look into all the weird corners.”

“Aye, I dare say you’re right,” father said, “most companies these days have got too many jumped-up generals and not enough sergeant majors. Now, Mavis, me long johns, you know where they are right?”

***

The next day, Edward was almost done sweeping up the droppings from the floor of the eyrie when, looking up, he saw a dark shape swooping in through one of the missing window panes. The owl made so little noise that had he not been glancing up he likely wouldn’t have noticed it. It circled near the ceiling for a moment then dived down towards a battered brass hopper. It pulled up at the last minute, dropping something from its talons into the chute. It rose up, again circling the heights of the room before picking a comfortable spot to take a rest atop one of the racks of shelving.

Edward watched the patch of shadow that the owl has disappeared into for a long moment and, when it showed no interest in leaving anytime soon, he turned his attention to the hopper. It was old, the metal showing through several layers of paint and, when he grabbed a chair to stand on, he was able to peer over the lip and see a wide funnel of yellowish metal, liberally textured with scratches and dents and brightly polished the further down you looked, from the regular brushing of whatever it was the owls dropped in. The funnel led to some kind of shaft that took a sharp turn out of the bottom of the hopper and through the external wall of the building.

He quickly finished the sweeping and propped the broom and shovel against the wall and set about trying to find his way to the other side of the wall.

This proved to be a more challenging task than Edward had counted on. The Royal Mail sorting facility was one of the older ones, and, in common with older industrial sites the world over, the buildings had grown, like mold in a discarded mug, with different pieces of defunct infrastructure overlapping each other until what was left was a maze of buildings, yards and back alleys. The alleays mostly existed because they weren’t quite caught up in the venn diagram of buildings around them, rather than anyone actively thinking that they were a good idea. Tracing his way around the edges of buildings, doubling back every time a route was blocked by galvanized steel or two walls just managing to meet each other at a corner. He eventually made it through, although he had to climb over a collection of old car tyres that were, by his reckoning, at the furthest point in the entire complex from any road or even vaguely car-sized space.

He was a little disappointed when it turned out that the output from the hopper was a small extension, little more than a lean-to on the far side of the wall. The door wasn’t locked (security mostly dealt with checking people on their way on and off the site rather than policing them inside the grounds). Inside was the tube running through the wall from the hopper and, at the foot of it, an unassuming postal sack, the same light blue tarpaulin as the rest of the company. A desk sat against one wall, broad, like the ones in the main sorting depot, and with a battered chair next to it. The desk was empty save for a franking machine and a battered money box. Edward walked over to the sack at the foot of the hopper and peered inside. It was half full with a jumble of letters and parcels and, although he couldn’t be sure of it, he got a vague feeling that the whole sack rustled slightly as he approached.

Edward pulled out a handful of the post and peered at it. They were letters mostly **,** the addresses written in the kind of beautiful handwriting that just didn’t seem to be taught these days. They were mostly sealed the old fashioned way, with molten wax pressed into shape by a stamp or signet ring or something. The parcels, likewise, seemed rather old-fashioned, mostly brown paper and string rather than cardboard and sellotape. There were postcodes written on one or two of the letters he glanced at, but most didn’t have it, instead seemingly making up for this by including extra address lines instructing the postman on how to find the side road, the colour of the front door and, in one case, where to scratch the cat in order to escape without being clawed.

***

“Father?”

“Yes, our Edward?”

You remember when we were kids and you used to fancy pigeons?”

Jim sniggered into his chips and gravy.

“Aye, although I’m not sure it verbs quite like that, but I was a pigeon fancier, yes.”

“Do folks still use them for sending messages?”

“Not really,” father said, “You see pigeons is only really good at finding their way home. So it’s fine if you take a pigeon from home, take it somewhere, then strap a message on and let it go, you know where it’ll go. But if you keep them too long they’ll assume the new place is home. So they’re not the best for that sort of thing. I mean, it’s not like you van pop a stamp in their beak and tell them where to go.”

“Can you not? Oh, I suppose not. What about something else, something smarter?”

“What, like a dog?”

“I was wondering about owls.”

“Owls?!” father said, then burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny about owls?”

“Oh, Im sorry son, it’s not your fault, it’s a common thing isn’t it, people thinkin’ owls are wise and clever. No, owls are thick as pig shit.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it’s cos of the eyes you see,” father said, placing his fork down and putting both hands to his face, making spectacles form his thumb and forefingers. “See the eyes on owls are so big that they take up all the space in their ‘eads and then there’s precious little for the brain to go in, so they’re actually, if you ever sit and watch them, powerfully stupid creatures.”

“Oh, right,” Edward said, deflated, “so, you’ve never heard of owls carrying things about then?”

“Not unless it’s a mouse they’re ripping up for their little ones, no.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edward gets on first name terms with the owls. Meanwhile the auditors smell something fishy.

## Chapter 2

Edward had been at the new job for a week and had more questions than answers about the eyrie. Father said that getting a bird to actually carry something for you was more or less impossible and that for pigeons you always had to strap your message to its leg. But day after day, if he kept his eyes open, at least one or two owls would appear, swoop down and release something into the chute to then, presumably, be hand sorted and added into the main postal system. That much was pretty self-explanatory, but what was harder was figuring out where they came from and, if what father told him was true, how they came to be able to carry letters and parcels for people.

The eyrie had several racks of tall shelving units, the big sort that you usually need a forklift truck for, for moving pallets on and off. But so far as Edward could tell, the owls only ever went to the very tops where they were subdivided into dark recessed pens and could easily avoid scrutiny by just moving back form the very edge.

“Do they get fed?” he asked Joan, his supervisor.

“Our ones do, yes, but not here. There’s a yard around the back where we put stuff for them. Most of the privately owned ones I presume are fed by their owners. I don’t suppose it matters much, these owls are phenomenal hunters.”

“Yeah? Like killing mice and stuff?”

“Yeah, usually… although this one time, there was a bit of a hoo-ha at a local farm. A bunch of them got it into their heads that they could take down a sheep.”

Edward half-choked on a mouthful of tea.

“A sheep?! he managed after a few hearty thumps on the back.”

“Oh I’m not saying they did, fortunately,” Joan said, “but they had a bloody good go.”

***

Edward could tell where the Royal Mail owls roosted. The bank of shelves hard up against one wall, the wall the abutted the main sorting office, always had more droppings on the floor beneath it than any of the rest. Maybe the proximity of the rest of the building made those roosts warmer, or maybe it was just to make his job easier. Either way, locating them was the easy part, the tough bit was getting up there to have a closer look. In the end he borrowed a ladder from his cousin’s window cleaning business and, arriving half an hour early for his shift (a punishingly early start even by Royal Mail worker standards) he managed to get it out of the van and secreted in the eyrie before the main shift came in at five.

He’d been getting quicker with the sweeping, but nobody seemed to really miss him anytime before six so he had a good twenty minutes between finishing sweeping up the droppings and needing to be anywhere. Twenty minutes was also terrifyingly long amount of time to be lying at the foot of a ladder after a nasty fall if something went wrong. Edward pushed that thought away and, as gingerly as possible, set about extending the ladder up to the height of the roosts. The ladder was a modern aluminium one, which meant that it bent and creaked as he climbed itt, not because it was going to break, but apparently just to give him the constant feeling that it might give way at any second. You know, making life thrilling.

As he approached the top Edward could make out the darker recesses of the roosts, little piles of straw and a set of pipes dripping water that was rusted blue with age. He also saw a pair of giant hazel eyes watching him.

“Oh, hello,” Edward said. The owl cocked its head to one side, then shuffled forwards. Edward held his hand out, loosley balled into a fist. The owl nuzzled it with its beak and Edward opened it for the bird to see.

“Oh, no, it’s empty, see?”

The owl locked gaze with him and then...rolled its eyes? It was a tricky gesture for an owl to do because they have to move their whole head in order to do this, which made Edward feel, ever so slightly, like he was being mocked. He reached down and managed to fish out a half eaten chocolate bar from his pocket. Edward proffered it to the owl. The bird loomed closer, examining the offering, then in a heartbeat snatched it from his hand and casually tossed it over its shoulder into the recesses of the roost. The owl turned back to Edward, nodded its head and then sat, expectantly. Edwards could see what looked like an old fashioned luggage label tied to one leg. He pointed to it and the owl shuffled forward and proffered its leg for Edward to see. The tag was a small piece of worn leather, with a flap in it that, when lifted, revealed a neat handwritten label:

“Pericles  
Eagle owl, Eurasian

Max load, 4lb”

“Ah, pleased to meet you, Pericles,” Edward said, offering his hand instinctively. The owl lowered its tagged leg, then reached forward and gently gripped Edward’s index finger in its beak and bobbed its head, shaking his hand.

After that first introduction it only took a couple of days and half a multipack for Edward to make the acquaintance of each of “the post owls” as he'd unthinkingly started referring to them in his head. Most were some form of barn owl, but there was a couple of smaller lighter birds. It turned out that Pericles, along with Herodotus and Aspasia were the only eagle owls and the only birds rated at more than one kilo.

Edward had compared the owls’ tags with the information in a bird spotting guide he found at the library, and the guide seemed to think they couldn't carry more than about half the weights written on the tags. He was pondering this, and whether he should think about informing the RSPCA about potential animal cruelty issues, one morning when a voice caught him by surprise.

“What the bloody hell are you doing up there?!?”

He looked down, hands clenching instinctively onto the shelf in front of him. Below Joan was glaring up at him, her hi-vis jacket looking almost like a tutu from this angle.

“Oh I was just checking in on Herodotus,” he said.

“You can't be up a ladder by yourself, it's against health and safety! Look don't move!”

She hurried over to the foot of the ladder and wiggled her feet into position against the plastic tips.

“Alright, I've got it. Climb down when you're ready.”

Edward climbed down. Then, wordlessly, Joan helped him stow the ladder then led him into the canteen. It was still twenty minutes before the first break so they had the space to themselves.

“Wait here,” Joan said, “and make us a cup of tea whilst you're at it?”

By the time Eddie finished making the tea Joan was back with an intimidating pile of notepads and forms.

“Now then, lad, there’s no need to panic, you’re not in trouble.”  
“Oh, that’s good to know”   
“But we’re just going to have to be a bit… careful, in how we phrase   
this. Right, first up accident book.”   
“Accident book? But I didn’t… nobody’s been hurt.”   
“Oh. I know, trust me things would be a lot more complicated if you had. But we’re supposed to note down near-misses too. As it happens this’ll probably look good for us on that front, makes us seem pro-active if you follow?”   
Edward shrugged. “I guess so.”   
“So, lets see, why exactly were you up the ladder?”   
“I, I wanted to have a look at the owls.”   
“Employee was engaged in self-initiated ongoing professional development and seeking experience and understanding beyond the basic remit of task provided,” Joan said, slowly, pen scratching across the form.   
“I guess?” Edward said.   
“Trust me, that looks good, means that you look like you’ve got a brain in your head and clarifies that nobody was telling you to do something unsafe. Now then, nobody told you to do it did they?”   
“No.”   
“OK, performed elevated access procedure unaccompanied without being assigned to such duties by appropriate line manager. This isn’t looking too bad actually. Should be good to give the auditors something to get their teeth into.”   
“Auditors?” Edward asked. He was still a little sketchy on what they actually were, but he knew that the word carried a stench of fear. Father would only ever say it when he thought he and his brother were out of earshot, and even then only in a hushed whisper.   
“Aye, don’t ask me what they’ve after exactly, but it’s always good to have something to distract them with, stops them trying to kick up a fuss with the stuff that actually matters.”   
“Do they come around a lot then?”   
“A fair bit, aye, but word is there’s something big gain’ on with them this time. They say they’re doing inspections and checking assets and procedures all through the company."   
“Oh dear,” Edward said, “I wonder why?”

***

The problem with work, so far as Thomas could tell, was that it never actually ended. Certainly each task had its well-defined end, a filing filed, an email sent, a letter signed, sealed and placed in the out-tray. But there was always more of the stuff and, to make it worse, whenever it was anything to do with numbers it lost even the vague superficial differences that made the rest of the job almost tolerable.

“So you see, there's really no irregularities in the gross numbers,” said the ruddy faced man sitting across the desk from him.

“Alright Merkin, I'll take your word for it on that. But then why has this been flagged for additional scrutiny then?”

“Ah, well, I'm not sure. I mean I suppose the numbers do look a little funny to an, ah… superficial examination.”

“Funny how?” Thomas asked.

Merkin, what was his first name, James? John? fished in his briefcase and passed Thomas (or rather “Mr Blenkinsop” to anyone below private secretary) a fat bundle of printouts from a spreadsheet. Thomas drew it across the desk and made a half hearted attempt at looking like he was examining it.

“Help me out, Merkin, what am I looking at here?” He said, “and give your response in words of no more than,” he paused and thought for a moment, “three syllables.”

“Well, sir, it's just that. All of these figures tend to come out to very odd amounts. Very few round numbers, or even things coming out clear to a penny.”

“That's not so unusual is it? I mean looking at aggregate accounts for an organisation of this size?”

Merkin's tongue peeked out from between his lips for a moment as he mulled it over.

“I suppose not. But part of the strange numbers seem to be coming from units that are entirely domestic.”

“Why should that matter?”

“Well, sir, if they're entirely domestic then they shouldn't ever be buying or selling anything in anything other than sterling, so you'd expect all of that to come out nice and round to the penny.”

“I see,” Thomas said, picking up the printouts again. “And you're sure there's nothing fishy about it?”

“Nothing that screams financial misdoings Mr Blenkinsop.”

“Stake your reputation on it?”

Merkin's face noticeably paled.

“I think you'd better take a closer look at this,” Thomas said, stabbing the wad of paper with his finger for emphasis.

“You needn't look so alarmed, you can think on this as some continuous professional development. Have a word with Caroline downstairs, tell her I'm seconding you to her team for site visits.”

“Umm, I'm not sure seconding works that way, sir.”

Thomas waved a hand dismissively.

“It'll be fine, you'll still be reporting to me, but you can shadow her team a bit too, see what's involved when your, oh what's the phrase? “Engaging with stakeholders.””

Thomas picked up the papers again and began leafing through them. After a few minutes Merkin coughed awkwardly and Thomas shooed him out of the office.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edward is promoted to Owl Master. Merkin is seconded to site-inspections. The owls have some suggestions.

##  Chapter 3

A few days after the health and safety bollocking, Joan poked her head into the eyrie and, because she wasn't immediately witness to any breaches of protocol, let out a sigh of relief.

“Ey-up,” Edward said, emerging from between the rows of shelving, half full dustpan in hand.

“Ah, our Edward, how are you?”

“Early starts are killing me, but mother says they do me good,” he said, marching over to the old steel dustbin and emptying the shovel.

“Good good, and how are you finding the owls?”

“Oh they're grand. A bit stand-offish at first, but they know what side their bread's buttered.”

“Ah, good, yes, glad to see you're settling in,” Joan said, then, after a pause, “no… minor injuries?”

“Minor injuries?”

“Oh, you know, cuts and scrapes, no… claw marks or bites?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that.”

“Good, because you know it's best to get it looked at by a doctor in case there's anything that might be...infected.”

“I mean, I've had my TB jab,” Edward said.

“Yes, except in case it's something... different.”

Edward shook his head and, to prove his point, rolled up his sleeves to show off his pale, intact, skin. Joan gave them a more than casual glance, muttering something under her breath.

“Edward, could you lend me a hand with something?”

“Sure.”

Joan produced a grey “fee to pay” card.

“We need to send this to one of the wi… to one of the eyrie customers. Do you think you could help me get it sent? I mean it looks like the birds have taken to you rather well and all and...would that be alright?”

“Sure,” Edward said, taking the card. “It’s only light, I figure one of the elf owls should be able to carry it. Could you give me a hand with the ladder then?”

With Joan’s help, getting up the ladder was a lot quicker and felt noticeably more secure. He picked one of the perches towards the far end where the smaller owls congregated. As he peered over the lip a small light-grey one shuffled towards the edge.

“Hello Paracelsus,” Edward said, “any chance you could pop this card to,” he studied the address, “place down in Cornwall?”

Paracelsus reached out a clawed foot and Edward handed him the card. The bird gave the card a long, hard stare, then turned its gaze back to him.

“Too far?” Edward asked.

The bird shook its head, then looked pointedly back at the card before spreading its wings, turning them upwards.

“Oh, I, I guess so that they can pay the excess, and then we’ll send them the parcel.”

The owl hid behind a wing and Edward could see the top of its head shaking again.

“Ok, that wasn’t the question. So, what’s the point in what?”

The owl placed the card on the shelf and slid it back towards him, one claw placed pointedly next to the card’s instructions.

“That’s the web address they can go to, where they can pay... ok, hang on.”

Edward picked up the card and scampered back down the ladder.

“Did he take it?”

“Ummm, not quite. I...ok this might sound a bit daft but, I think the owls might have some suggestions for...improving stakeholder participation?”

***

Caroline’s office was one floor down from John’s and several centuries more modern in outlook. Instead of wood panelling and bookcases hers was white-washed walls, minimalist furniture and a strapline at the bottom of every email explaining, however futilely, that she believes in running a paper-free office and that written correspondence will be ignored. The walls of her office were floor-to-ceiling glass in a vague compromise between wishing to appear transparent and approachable, while not wanting to have every high level departmental cock-up overheard by her entire site inspection team. One of the drawbacks was that even with the soundproof double-glazing and her monitors carefully angled to neither face, nor reflect into the office, everyone could still see her when she took a nap, or ate her lunch. It was during the latter of these that she saw John Merkin from accounting weaving his way towards her. She carried on chewing on the sandwich as she watched him approach. It was fascinating, he was like a sort of incompetent lion, heading her way but trying not to make eye contact. He kept pausing and looking over at desks despite the fact that he didn’t even work for this section. When he arrived at the door he knocked, just for good measure. Caroline waved him in but didn’t put her sandwich down. Part of her wondered whether that counted as being rude, or dedicated, multitasking you see?

“Merkin, how can I help you?”

He slipped in through the door but didn’t take a seat, instead standing, hands behind his back, looking glumly at a spot vaguely around her feet.

“Uh, Mr Blenkinsop said he’d contact you about...me?”

She frowned, checked her e-mail inbox.

“I’ve got nothing written from him?”

“Uh, no, ah, see I think it might work the other way?”

“You mean the strong worded email I’m about to send him asking what in actual fuck he’s up to this time?”

“Yes, uh, no. I mean yes I think you need to e-mail, but I think he wants you to second me.”

“But I don’t want to and… that’s not how any of this works...hang on.”

She held up a finger for silence, picked up the phone and jabbed in a number with her little finger.

“Blenkinsop,” she said.

“Oh, I’m afraid you’ve just missed him, he’s headed out for lunch,” came a friendly voice at the other end of the line.

“No I haven’t, his car’s still in the car park,” she said, waving Merkin into a spare office chair.

“Oh, well I’m not sure I can,” said the voice.   
“Just tell him it's Caroline, ok? And yes that it’s urgent.”

“I...I can have a look I suppose?”

“Would you? Thanks awfully!”

Even over the shaky phone line she could make out the hurried footsteps running from then back to the phone.

“Just transferring you now,”

There was a scrabble and a click.

“Carol, hello there, goodness, you're lucky you caught me?” Thomas said.

“You mean you were planning on fleeing the building before I get to ask what the fuck?”

“Oh Carol, what’s this about this time?”

“I’ve got Merkin here saying something about you wanting me to request him for one of my teams?”

“Oh yes, that, sorry, I thought we’d already been over it?”

Caroline put her hand over the receiver and, looking at John, said, “how long ago did he send you to me?”

“about ten minutes ago, I guess,” John said.

She nodded and took her hand from the receiver

“By which you mean you thought we’d talked it over in the five minutes since you sent him down here?”

“Oh goodness, was it that recent? Ah, that probably explains it then, just haven’t found the time,” Thomas said.

Caroline reached a hand up to massage her temples and tried to remember what it was her therapist had said about getting back into her adult. In the end she just snapped, “OK, fine. But that’s not how words work!” and slammed the phone down.

She took a deep breath, opened her eyes and noticed that Merkin was, sort of, not exactly cowering, but definitely leaning away from her desk.

“Well,” she said, “sorry you had to witness that. Umm, yes, I guess this means you're with us now.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure it will be a valuable learning experience,” he said, forcing a smile.

“Indeed,” she said. “actually you’ve been given more or less carte blanche so far as my team’s concerned.”

“Oh?” he said, his face showed a curious mix of surprise, delight and apprehension.

“Although the phrase I’d personally use would be that you’re being offered plenty of rope here, so do try not to hang yourself.”

***

“It doesn’t make sense sending this,” Edward said, pointing at the postage-owing card. “Because someone who’s relying on a tame bird for communication probably can’t log on to the website to pay the fee. And there’s a good chance they’re living somewhere remote enough that they’re not going to be able to nip in to a post office to pay either.”

“Alright then, what are you thinking?”

“Get the owls to collect the excess postage.”

“The...owls?”

“Yeah.”

“Edward, they’re just birds, we can’t go giving them purses and things and expect them to carry out complex administrative tasks like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re birds, that’s why.”

“But they’re not just birds are they? I talked to my dad about it, and from what he says there’s no way ordinary owls could do what these ones do.”

“Like what?”

“Like go to an address written on an envelope.”

“But, I mean, carrier pigeons do.”

“But they don’t though, carrier pigeons fly home, and that’s about it. These ones, they can understand something as complicated as a postal address, flying from here to a destination, dropping a thing and then returning. These are no ordinary owls.”

“Ok, alright just so that I can get this straight,” Joan said, “what specifically are you suggesting? Sending the postage-owing card and getting the bird to collect the fee and bring it back here?”

“Well yes, sort of, except that it seems to me to be a waste of resources making two trips.”

“So, what? Send the owl, with the parcel and the postage owing note, and a purse for carrying the money?”

“I know it’s a lot, but the owls, the bigger ones, Pericles and the like, I think they could handle it.”

“Oh, aye? And when the customer tries to grab the parcel off the bird anyway?”

Edward ran his tongue over his teeth and took in a breath.

“I think they could do it. I mean, I think they are tough enough to be able to defend themselves if anyone gets shirty.”

Joan folded her arms over her chest and scowled at her mug of tea.

“Well,” she said, “truth be told, there is a bit of a backlog of items of post awaiting avian delivery that are currently shy the requisite postage.”

“There you go then,” said Edward trying not to sound too smug, “there’s clearly an issue with the current system, and this can help resolve it?”

“Alright, we’ll give it a go, but you’re the one who’s going to have to handle the paperwork for this one.”

“Paperwork?”

“Oh yes,” she said, rummaging in a drawer. She produced a shrink-wrapped ledger book and slid it across the desk to him. “You’ll have to keep a record of what goes out, the postage owing, and the payments received. See how we’re doing after a month?”

Edward looked at the ledger, not wanting to seem too keen.

“You’ll be needing some office space too I expect, now that we’re setting you up to be owl-master.”

“Wait, owl-master? I’ve only been here two weeks.”

Joan shrugged.

“The position has been, how to put it, vacant, for a while now. Oh and you’ll be taking over the wi...the special sorting.”

They were on their feet now and Edward was trying not to walk ahead as if he already know about the lean-to on the far side of the eyrie.

***

Caroline showed John to a spare desk in the corner of the office. A battered old laptop was produced and he was indoctrinated into the mysteries of the fifth floor’s toilet and kitchen arrangements along with the wi-fi code and instructions that absolutely all expenses had to be backed up with a VAT receipt and properly filled out time sheet. It was so similar to accounting that he felt a little homesick.

It took a disappointingly short trip to gather his current files and pot plant from his office and transfer them to the corner desk and within an hour of his meeting with Mr Blenkinsop he was faced with the very real problem of where to actually begin.

Well, the majority of the strange looking numbers had come from a domestic section, so it made sense to go and look there for answers first. A couple of e-mails got him the all important master file that took the abbreviated codes for the different sections and listed actual names and addresses. And the root of his problems lay, at least in part, at the East Midlands sorting office and a subsection whimsically named “The Eyrie”.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The auditors arrive at the Eyrie. Confusion over the mysterious payments thickens. Perecles sets out with a parcel.

##  Chapter 4

“OK Pericles, are you sure you’ve got this straight?”

The owl nodded.

“Right, well just be sure to make sure you get the right amount or there’ll be hell to pay yeah?”

Pericles cocked his head and for a moment Edward had the awful feeling that the bird was weighing up its options and contemplating what kind of trouble Edward would get into and whether it minded.

“Look, just see me right and there’ll be a nice bit of corned beef in it for you, yes?”

Pericles snatched the purse, card and parcel from Edwards grasp, in a way that shouldn't have been possible for an animal with only two feet, and then slipped away silently into the twilight.

***

“Where do they come from?”

“The owls?”

“Yeah, I mean, they’re not ordinary owls so, is there some kind of special breeding or training program for them? Like a sort of Battersea clever owls home?”

Joan was finally beginning to loosen up. Edward got the impression that the eyrie had grown to be something of a dirty secret in her world, but now that he was sort of established and not either grumbling or freaking out, she seemed to be treating it more like the curiosity that it was.

“They come from the Ministry I think.”

Edward racked his brain.

“The Department for Trade and Industry, you mean?”

Joan shrugged.

“Whenever I’ve been asked it’s always just ‘The Ministry’ and you get the impression it's one of those titles where both words begin with capitals, if you follow.”

“I guess so. although we don't really have ministries nowadays.”

“Don’t we?”

“No, my dad used to be a civil servant, says they still call the politician at the top a minister, but the actual thing itself is officially a government department.”

“Oh, does it much matter?”

“No,” Edward said, “although it would always rub him up the wrong way if we asked him how things were at the Ministry.”

“Anyway, sometimes the Ministry will send through stuff for us, updates on pricing and things, and then, when one of our birds is starting to get a bit old and weary we’ll come in and find that there’s a younger one in its place.”

“And you don’t know where the old owls go?”

“Beats me, maybe it’s like Top Gun, you know, they go and retire to somewhere where they teach the younger ones how to do what they do.”

It was a little after ten and everything had calmed down. The flurry of activity to get everything into the sacks for the individual walks had been done, countless red rubber bands had been snapped into place and they were now in the lull before today's offerings to the gods of high-volume administration came flooding in. A perfect time for a cup of tea and, curiously, the one time of day when it was quiet enough that, if you listened very closely, you could hear the unexpected sound of a car pulling up outside. Edward heard it, Joan did too, and they shared a moment of relaxed idle curiosity before Joan’s face contorted in realisation.

“Shit!” she said then, barrelling out of the office, “Auditors! Auditors! For fuck’s sake nobody do anything stupid!”

Edward decided that the best thing to do was make himself scarce, so he slipped out of the office and retreated to the lean-to to get on with sorting the items of owl post that had come in over the last few days. It was a pleasingly simple task, the sort he found he could just lose himself in for an hour or more without really noticing.

It was basically a crude sort, put envelopes in one bag, parcels in another, but there was the added factor of checking the postage. Most of the items had the correct postage, or near enough, usually in the form of stamps although apparently few of the clientele had access to a franking machine. A few items had insufficient postage and Edward filled in the appropriate card for the recipient to then pay the remaining balance. And a tiny handful were without postage, but had small secondary envelopes attached with “Owl Master” written on them in neat lettering. When Edward opened these he found small collections of sterling coins that covered the desired postage for each item. They also tended to be in near mint condition and with a shocking variety of dates. He wasn’t much of a coin person, but he definitely knew that pennies should be smaller than two-pence pieces, and that one coin that he initially took for an old ten pence piece turned out to be a silver florin. Edward recorded each payment in the ledger book and divied up the resulting coins into the metal money box and used the franking machine to mark the items. He liked it, just enough variety to keep it from being tedious, but simple enough that he could let his thoughts wander.

It was also simple enough that he was able to notice the sound of approaching footsteps.

“You'll find him in here,” came Joan’s voice with the calm certainty of someone who’s confident that the bus isn’t going to run them over because they’ve just tossed somebody else under its wheels.

The door creaked open and a young, podgy ruddy faced man ducked his way inside. Edward turned his chair to face them, stood and offered his hand.

“Edward, Saulson” he said.

“Ah, pleased to meet you, I’m John Merkin, I expect you’ve been told why I’m here?”

Edward shook his head. The auditor’s face fell, but he recovered quickly.

“Well, I’m here as part of a wider audit of the organisation, and we’re just, sort of, following up on one or two minor details that could do with a little more, uh, clarification.”

Edward would probably have been more concerned had he been working for the venerable institution of the Royal Mail for more than a couple of weeks. Yes he was Owl Master, but they couldn’t expect him to be on top of that after just a few days right?

“How can I help?”

“Oh, well, I,” John began. Edward noted he was literally wringing his hands. “Now, this might seem a bit odd but, for the sake of clarity, could you explain, in simple terms, what the eyrie is,” John said, “and I mean, explain it as if I were just a member of the public.”

“A member of the public?”

“Yes.”

“As in as if you’d just wandered in off the street?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“None of your bloody business, I suppose.”

John’s face did that thing computer games do when you try to stab a character that’s not meant to be stabbed so it’s sort of low-key immortal. He smiled, flinched imperceptibly and then carried on as if nothing had happened.

“I’m sorry?”

“Oh that’s alright lad, but you’re not supposed to be here. Can you see yourself out or should I call my manager over?”

John blinked, looked awkwardly over at Joan who was doing her best to appear professional and disapproving, which is hard to do when your face has gone red and your cramming a fist into your mouth.

“OK, let me try that again. This time can you answer the question as if I'm an auditor and this is a serious matter, but it’s my first day doing this so when I say I know nothing about the eyrie I really mean it.”

“Oh, sure. Well, the eyrie is like a pigeon coop but for owls rather than pigeons.”

“I see, and what purpose does this serve as part of the Royal Mail’s mission statement?”

“Well,” Edward said, “so far as I understand it, there’s some folk who live a long way from their nearest post office and who can’t be got-to through normal post, so they use owls to send and receive letters and parcels.”

“Oh, really, I didn’t realise we still used live animals for that sort of thing.”

“You and me both, pal,” Edward said, “until about two weeks ago.”

“Two weeks?”

“Yeah.”

Joan managed to recover herself enough to say, “The position of Owl Master has been vacant for some time and Edward here has been showing great promise in the role.”

“Great promise?”

“Yes, he’s already proposed reforms that could potentially boost the efficiency of Royal Mail assets by up to 100%”

“He… him?” John said, pointing at Edward.

He glanced back and forth between Joan and Edward who were sharing some kind of unspoken contest over who could look the most smug and unhelpful without overstepping internal guidelines on audit cooperation. He fished a notebook and biro out of his briefcase and sighed deeply, his faint hopes of a speedy resolution were quickly fading.

***

That evening, John typed up a summary e-mail to Caroline and blind copied Mr Blenkinsop. He was about to grab a quick shower before braving the hotel restaurant when his phone rang.

“Merkin dear boy how are you finding your first day out in the wild?”

“Ah, Mr Blenkinsop, sir. Yes, I actually just copied you in on an e--”

“--yes I saw, what’s it say.”

“sir?”

“The e-mail man. Come along, you know you don’t get very far in the civil service if you actually read all the things you’re given, you’d never find time for anything else.”

John’s first instinct was to protest, his second, that he followed, was not to answer back to a superior, while a third, somewhere in the back of his mind, began mulling over the possible veracity of that idea and how it might actually explain quite a lot about the systems of government.

“Well, sir, it’s on the face of it pretty straightforward. it’s a facility for sending and receiving post by avian courier.”

“Avian co… oh, right, pigeons and the like?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good, and the accounts?”

Joh licked his lips, a cold sweat pricking his brow.

“The accounts are… incomplete.”

“I see,” Blenkinsop said. The words were drawn out, polite, but dripping with unspoken repercussions.

“It turns out that the person in charge is effectively a new recruit and is still, sort of, learning the ropes,” John said.

“And the predecessor?”

John furiously flicked through his scattering of notes from the day’s conversations.

“From what I can gather he was, er, missing in action.”

“Missing in action?”

“Direct quote from one of the senior staff members sir. I’ve pushed for details but there’s precious little paperwork here.”

“Interesting, not a self contained operation then?”

“No, and that’s where it gets a little confusing, sir.”

“Confusing how?”

“Well, when I ask things like where do you report to, where do the, ah, avian couriers come from, they keep saying, ‘from the ministry.”

“Don’t be daft, Merkin, we are the Ministry.”

“Yes, sir, but I think there’s maybe a bit of an… administrative overlap going on.”

“Who on earth with? The Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Oh Lord, I hope it isn’t another MoD shadow operation. Those are always a nightmare.” there was the sound of splashing water then Blenkinsop continued. “Did I ever tell you about that incident up at Seascale back when I was with the Home Office?”

“Uh, no, sir.”

“Ah, another time, perhaps, ask me over a glass of port,” more splashing, “Now, then, can I leave that in your hands?”

“Yes, sir, I’ll get onto the Ministry, just as soon as I ascertain which one.”

“Good job, and keep me post--oh, no, wait there was something else I had for you.”

“Yes?”

There was a further sloshing sound and the scrape of a phone being put down, then retrieved.

“Yes, I was just sitting here having a ponder over your mystery figures. And I’m not sure what you’ll make of this, but there is definitely a pattern.”

“Oh yes?”

“Yes. I think this might be a foreign currency after all, but not like any I’ve encountered.”

John was furiously scribbling.

“How is it different?”

“Well, it’s in base 493.”

The tip of John’s pencil snapped.

“What?”

“Yes, curious business. But for any given date, if we assume they’re calculating the exchange rate daily, then the lowest common denominator is four hundred and ninety three.”

“I see, ummm, thank you sir. I can’t say that I’m feeling particularly enlightened?”

“No, I imagine not, but at least you’re a little better informed now, eh?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Perecles makes a delivery. John comes to dinner. A coin throws a cat among the pigeons.

##  Chapter 5

  
  


Samaiel was out walking the dogs when the owl came. He returned to find it, a huge regal creature with the kind of eyebrows he could only dream of, peering in through the shop window and occasionally rapping angrily on the glass panes with its beak.

“Ahem,” he said as he approached. The owl turned to face him and as it did so, carefully stepped between him and the parcel that was resting on the window sill.

“Is that for me?” Samaiel asked.

The owl didn’t blink, which wasn’t unusual for an owl, but he got the impression that he was being given a deliberate bout of non-blinking eye contact. The owl bobbed its head.

“Oh good I’ve been expecting something. He reached for the parcel only for his hand to be blocked by the bird’s wing.

“It’s alright it’s only a few bits of jewellery from my aunt that she wants fixing.

“Caw!”

“What’s that, oh.” he looked down, with the leg it wasn’t standing on the bird was thrusting a piece of card at him. He took it, peered at the dense neat type.

“Oh, I see. Well you’d better come in then.”

He unlocked the shop and took the dogs into the back before returning to find the owl, the card and a brown leather drawstring purse waiting on the counter.

He opened the till and picked up the card again.

“Let’s see one… oh, that’s strange. Let’s see, one sickle, twenty tree nuts is that?”

He peered at the unfamiliar markings.

“Postage owing, funny symbol, one, dot, twenty three,” he read aloud.”

The owl picked up the empty purse in its beak and waved it at him.

“Yes, alright I’m working on it. Let’s see. Less than two sickles seems like very little for delivering something this size I mean I suppose it could be a galleon, that’s maybe a little much, but then again, what with the prices going up and all?”

“Caw!”

The owl tossed the purse onto the counter in front of him and started strutting back and forth in front of the parcel. Samaiel scooped one of the few galleons out of the till and carefully counted out the nuts. He slipped the weighty handful of coins into the purse and passed it over. The bird spread its wings and bowed dramatically before sliding the parcel towards him.

“Pleasure doing business. Do you need me to open the door or can…”

The tinkle of splintering glass rang through the shop. “Oh, never mind then.”

***

“So, you say the owls come from the Ministry?”

“Yes,” Edward said.

“And you’re supposed to send copies of your ledger to the Ministry?”

“Yes.”

John licked his lips.

“Which one?”

“Sorry?”

“Which Ministry?”

Edward shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know, I’ve only been here a couple of weeks, it hasn’t really come up.”

“Alright, but there must be some way for you to communicate with them, right? Like an address or a phone number or something.”

Edward shook his head.

“Bollocks!” John said.

Edward smiled at that. They were standing in the chilly confines of the eyrie proper, looking upwards at the hidden racks of roosts.

“So, what’ll you do?”

John sighed.

“I don’t know. circulate a memo around the other departments asking if anyone has the authority or records for this place so that we can go about pinning down exactly what’s been going on here.”

“Is it bad then? This?”

“Uh, on the face of it, no. I mean, if it’s serving the public then that’ll ultimately go down well, you know it fits with the Royal Mail mission statement. It’s not like someone’s been funneling funds into some weird offshore tax haven or anything. But the whole lack of records thing is a bit of an issue.”

“Oh, aye?”

“Yes, surprisingly the inland revenue has a tremendous tendency to assume that where the records are incomplete someone’s probably been breaking the law.”

“Fuck,” Edward said, suppressing a shiver and reminding himself he’d done nothing wrong, so far as he knew.

“Of course, absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, but even HMRC would probably struggle to cause too much harm unless someone’s actually been doing something bad here. Rap on the knuckles at worst I expect.”

“Will you be going back then? To London.”

“Umm, I suppose so, but I can probably send my enquiries via e-mail so I should probably stick around for a few more days in case other questions come up.”

“Right you are then. Only our mother says to invite you over for dinner.”

“Oh, uh, thank you.” John paused for a moment wondering whether this would be in violation of department guidelines on receipt of gifts from third parties. “Yes, go on then, that sounds lovely,” John said.

***

It was mid-afternoon that Pericles returned and damn near gave Edward a heart attack. Nobody had ever mentioned one of the more disturbing facts about owls is that they fly noiselessly. It made sense on some level, what with them being nocturnal predators so needing to be as stealthy as possible in order to not alert their prey to its imminent death. But it also meant that the first Edward knew of Pericles’ arrival was the small sack of coins hitting him in the top of the head.

It was a good hit, and had it not been for Edwards impulsive ducking, clutching his injured head and shrieking in terror, the sack might very probably have just sat there. As it was the purse fell to the floor with a chink and, recovering himself slightly, Edward looked about for his assailant.

Pericles was sitting on one of the empty shelves at about head-height watching him with what seemed to be more than just idle curiosity.

“What the hell did you do that for?” he said, tentatively tapping the sore spot on his cranium. Pericles looked pointedly at the fallen purse, then back at Edward, before cocking his head.

“Oh, well, thank you, I suppose. But next time can you leave it on the desk or, you know, hand it to me or something?”

Pericles nodded then drew his head up, chin tucked in. Edward got the feeling he was being mocked.

He picked up the purse, loosened the strings and emptied it into his hand. A stream of pennies filled his palm. No, not quite pennies. He squinted at them they were a little larger and the figure on one side was most definitely not Elizabeth II. There was something else, he shook the purse and a fat, shiny yellow coin landed atop the others with more a ‘clunk’ than a ‘chink’. It was heavy enough that it almost made him drop the whole pile. It was also unlike anything he’d ever seen. Edward quickly slipped them back into the purse then made his way, the long way round, to the eyrie office.

Once in the lean-to, with the door firmly shut, he laid the contents of the purse out on the desk. There were 26 of the penny-like coins, showing the usual range of colors and cleanliness he’d expect from loose change. The yellow coin, he hesitated to call it gold, brass maybe? Was fatter than a two-pound coin, both in width and thickness. It made him think of the special commemorative five pound coin his gran had given him on the millenium. Except for the colour, which just sort of drew you in. He held it carefully in both hands, letting the light play on it, like gazing into a fire.

“Well then,” he muttered to himself, “the hell’s going on here then?”

***

Edward’s parents house was a ramshackle place on the corner of a Victorian housing estate. The kind that might once have been intended as a sort of supervisor’s office or the reverse of incorporating affordable housing in new builds. Which is to say it was about twice the size of all the rest of the houses on the street, and was a sort of architectural monstrosity that had taken most of the design elements from the other houses and tried to either duplicate them or just stretch them until they were large enough to wrap around the desired five-bedroom interior. It made John a little queasy to look at.

Inside things were normal, for a certain value of normal. Chaotic, friendly and shambolic all sprung to mind. He managed to navigate his way through the entrance, corridor and living room without stepping on anyone’s foot or any of the about eighteen dogs that were seemingly just so delighted to see him that they simultaneously wanted to push him back out of the door. Once in the living room he was introduced to the whole clan, Edward’s mother and father (confusingly only introduced as “our mother” and “our father”) his brother, Jim, who had the look of one of those men John saw on the tube, in the skinny ties and too-tight suits.

Dinner started out lovely, the family seemed very curious to hear about life at the Department, and John tried to make his work sound as interesting as he could, which usually wasn't interesting enough to get any more than an insincere “oh” out of people.

“so, there’s a lot of money involved?”

“In government, yes, I mean I’m not saying that any of the people involved have a lot, but when you’re looking over the accounts for all the schools in a city, well, it all adds up.”

“And you’re there to stop anyone from nicking it?”

“Not exactly, fraud detection is certainly a bit of it but, uh, that’s not actually my team.”

“Oh no?”

“No, I’m more serving public transparency, you see?”

Their faces fell a little. That was the problem with people not in the Department, they weren’t under any obligation to reassure you that you were making a valuable contribution to the machine of government. Forks and knives clicked against plates.

“Do you deal much in foreign currency?” Edward asked.

“Umm, a little.” John said, “truth be told most of that is just trying to figure out what the exchange rate was on specific dates. That and some rather tedious confusion over marginal VAT rates.”

Edward reached into his pocket, pulled out something chunky and round and tossed it onto the table in front of John.

“Any idea where that one’s from?”

It was gold, or at least gold in colour, thick and chunky like an old Crown with a picture of a… gnome? on the obverse. Edward’s mind reeled back to his conversation with Mr Blenkinsop the previous night.

“Oh,” he said, “That’s ummmm, an interesting development.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edward sends a message to The Ministry. John takes a gold galleon to be tested.

##  Chapter 6

“Merkin? Ah, goodness you are doing a stirling job of keeping me posted. How is it going up there in the North?”

“Loughborough, sir, it’s only the Midlands.”

“Yes, I suppose, but it is north of me now isn’t it?”

“I suppose so sir.”

“Excellent that we’re in agreement, now, what news.”

John gave the abbreviated version of the past twenty four hours. It started alright, he clenched his eyes shut when he relayed that he had gone for dinner with one of the Royal Mail employee’s family. And then it came to the coin.

“The thing is sir, I think it might be worth testing it.”

“This coin? What for? Not worried it’s secretly half a kilo of prime grade heroine are you?”

“No sir, worse than that, I’m worried that it might be real gold, sir.”

“Real gold?”

“Yes sir,”

“I mean, I understand the meaning of the words but you seem to be thinking that it’s a terribly bad thing? Is it?”

“Well, sir, you remember our discussion where you suggested that the unusual transactions could be a foreign currency. Well, I think this could be a part of it.”

“Yes, I can see that, and you say there were some pennies as well?”   
“Not quite, similar but a little larger, think more like pre-decimal pennies?”

“Ah, yes, I remember those, albeit barely. So what’s the complication?”

“Well, first up we need to clarify the actual exchange rate and who’s collecting what fees in which currency. From the sounds of it this,” John pulled out the coin and looked it over again, “this ‘galleon’ has been offered in payment for a fee of one pound sterling.”

“And that’s not ok?”

“To be perfectly honest, sir, I’ve no idea. The point is that it’s inherently more complicated than the system here seems to allow for. I don’t even know where to begin with it.”

There was a faint creaking at the other end of the line.

“I tell you what,” said Mr Blenkinsop after a pause. “I’ll have a word with a friend of mine at the treasury, see if I can get a handle on the scope of this thing. Now, are you sure that this thing might be something other than, I don’t know, brass or something?”

“It’s a possibility?”

“Alright then. And you’re in Loughborough you say?”

“That’s right sir.”

“Well how about you go see about getting that coin tested. I think there’s a place up in Sheffield that does assaying, pop your head round the door, see if they can lend a hand.”

“Yes, sir.”

John sat on his bed in the hotel, looking at the coin. Edward had been reluctant to let him have it but seeing as it was technically not his property and John had immediately produced a full triplicate signed receipt for it, he’d had to let it go. As John rolled it over in his hands he thought about how much wealth this single coin represented. He fished a battered brass pound coin from his wallet and weighed each in his hands. Everything screamed at him that this galleon was worth considerably more than a pound.

And where this one came from, there’s almost certainly more.

As he lay back he thought about the words Caroline had offered before he headed up here, that comment about being given just enough rope to hang himself.

***

The Sheffield Assay Office, it transpired, wasn’t, as John had imagined, some great gothic construction in the heart of the city. At least it wasn’t nowadays. Instead, it was housed on an industrial park with easy access to the M1. At the front an asymmetrical sweeped roof and big windows tried to vaguely damp down the “light industrial unit” feel of the place, but as he pulled into the car park at the rear he could see that, beyond the offices at the front of the building, the architect had given up even trying to disguise that this was basically a warehouse with slightly different furniture inside.

The reception and offices at the front were hotel conference suite style, clean, bland, a too thick carpet and an air conditioning system that in the summer would struggle to fight the effect of the sun streaming through the floor to ceiling windows.

“Can I help you,” asked a man in a suit and a name badge at the desk.

“Ah, yes, hello. My Names John Merkin, I’m from the Department of Trade and Industry.” said John, pulling out a business card. The man nodded, examined the card then repeated his initial question.

“Yes, I was wondering whether you could tell me what this is?” John said, pulling the coin from his pocket and unwrapping it from the handkerchief he'd been storing it in.

“I see,” said the man behind the counter, moving over to a computer. “Are you registered with us?”

“Umm, no, is that a problem?”

The man thought for a long minute, pulled a face, then said, “I’ll just go and ask for you. Could you wait here?”

John nodded and perched himself on one of the chairs in the entranceway. After a few minutes a woman with scraped back hair and a thin smile appeared.

“Mr Merkin?” she said, without looking at his business card.

“Yes,”

“Alexandra Greeves, I understand you’ve something that you'd like testing?”

“Yes, that’s right,” he said, handing over the coin. She held it close to her face, turning it gently this way and that, then bounced it gently in her cupped hand.

“You own work?” she asked.

“Uh no, it’s, uh, something I’m actually trying to trace.”

“I’m afraid we might not be much use on that front. There’s no hallmark you see, so either it’s not from the UK or whoever made it has been selling it illegally. Assuming it’s gold of course.”

“You think it might be?”

She shrugged, “you’ve certainly come to the right place for that. We’re always keen to help Her Majesty’s Government in their investigations.”

John felt about three paces behind in the conversation.

“You say they were selling it illegally?” he asked.

“Oh yes, if it’s gold, silver or platinum and you’re selling it in the UK, then it needs to be hallmarked.” She gave him a long cold look. “You said you were here on behalf of trading standards?”

“Uh, Trade and Industry, it’s an uh internal matter, for now at least.”

“Right,” she said in a voice that suggested she might be referring this to their own investigations unit.

She took the coin with her, marched through a pair of double doors marked “Private” and left him standing idle.

“Uh, sir,” said the man from reception, “If I could just trouble you to sign here, in order to arrange the billing?”

“Billing?”

“Yes, sir. We gladly assist HM Government any way we can, but a full assay done as a priority item for an unregistered client incurs certain additional fees.”

“Oh, right you are then,” he said.

Caroline was going to just love him for this.

***

It doesn't count as talking to yourself if there’s someone else there. This logic is irrefutable and takes little account of the grey areas such as if the other person is asleep, listening to something on headphones, deaf, or, in Edward’s case, an owl.

Tinnitus was one of the smaller owls. Edward felt like maybe the name got written down wrong but he was fairly sure that whoever named the precocious tawny might have been going for something a little different.

“Of course it strikes me as being one of them daft situations where the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing,” he said, sweeping the broom across the floor. Tinnitus gave an encouraging ‘cheep’.

And speaking of hands not knowing what the other was doing, Edward was finding himself in a similar situation. Following on from Pericles’ successful debt collection, they’d begun implementing it at full bore and the chinking purses were landing on his desk with an unsettling frequency. As it was he had a growing collection of exotic numismatic pieces building up in the cashbox and an increasingly complex set of entries in the ledger book. The first one had been straightforward enough, one big gold coin equals one pound sterling, but this conversion factor didn’t seem to be carrying across between different customers. To make matters worse, silver coins were arriving in the mix, too. No matter what values he attributed to the different coins it never tallied in all cases. In the end he had to conclude that half the problem was that whoever was filling the purses at the other end was likely having just as much trouble as he was.

“I mean, from the sounds of it an awful lot of effort is going on here to find out what’s going on when the folks who are investigating should be the ones that are organising it all in the first place.”

“Cheep.”

Edward paused and looked around, Tinnitus was sitting on one of the shelves at about head height, watching him.

“Wait, did you just say, “cheep”?” he asked.

Tinnitus chirped and cocked his head on one side.

“No, I mean did you say it, just now, like pronouncing the word?”

Tinnitus cocked his head the other way, cawed, and Edward decided to move on.

“Now, suppose I was to actually straight up ask them to just get their acts together, do you think they’d do that? You know, just sort it out and leave me and Joan alone to just get on with the job?”

It was at about that moment that Edward started to get an idea. And like most ideas that pop up fully formed, this one had a whiff of danger about it, a whiff of asking questions that oughtn't to be asked.

“Tinnitus,” he said, “if I gave you a letter, could you take it to the Ministry for me?”

Tinnitus chirped and nodded his head. Edward tapped a finger against his lips for a minute than went off in search of a pen and paper.

***

John might have been dozing. If pressed on the matter by someone looking serious he’d have denied it outright, but if approached by some sympathetic person with an understanding tone and a reassuring smile he might confess to having let the comfortable chair and the warmth of the sunshine carry him away for just a moment there.

Alexandra Greaves did not have a friendly consoling smile, and suddenly finding her standing over him John quickly barked out an insistence that he hadn’t been asleep. She gave him a stony look and invited him to come into her office to discuss the results of their testing. She waved him into a chair and sat across the desk from him. She produced a red plastic tray and placed it on the desk, then pulled out the coin from the tray and placed it on the polished pine between them.

“This,” she said, “really is a fascinating piece.”

“Oh yes?”

“Yes.”

“Is it gold then?”

She paused, drummed her fingers on the table then reached into the tray and passed John the bundle of papers that the coin had been sitting on.

“According to our XRF machine, yes, and at a very high purity. Four nines at least.”

“XRF?”

“X-ray fluorescence. It’s a non-destructive testing machine that figures out what’s in something by firing x-rays at it.”   
“Ok, and you say it’s, four nines?”   
“Purity, this is at least 99.99% pure gold.”

“Oh, ok, thank you.” John said, standing up and reaching for the coin. Alexandra held up a finger and he paused.

“That was the XRF result. But as a matter of routine we always do physical testing on pieces from first-time submitters such as yourself.

“I see. And do those tests say something different?”

She said nothing, watching him. John retreated back into his chair.

A clock, out in reception, ticked noisily.

“I have been informed by our assaysers, and you’ll see their notes in those papers, that they have been unable to perform a physical test on this piece.

“Unable?” John said, leafing through the pages. The forms were printed but the notes were in a variety of different people’s handwriting, getting increasingly hurried and confused the deeper into the bundle he got.

“It resisted abrasion and acid testing, which simply shouldn’t be possible for gold at this level of purity. Then we tried to take a core sample and it broke, she glanced at her computer, “five diamond-tipped drill bits.”

“I, oh, is that bad?”

“Mr Merkin, I am a patient woman but this afternoon has really been rather trying so I’ll put this plainly. What’s going on?”

“I, uh, I don’t understand.”   
“Nor do I, frankly if I hadn't come and overseen some of these tests I’d have assumed that one of my assayers was exaggerating, but I’ve seen it for myself. Now, what’s your, ugh, deal?”

“I don’t have one, I’m just a civil servant.”

“Are you some kind of a magician? Is this part of some hidden camera show?”

“No, really, I know as much as you about this.”

“Oh you clearly know more than I do,” she said, “for example, how this piece came into your possession.”

“Look I really don’t feel that this level of questioning is appropriate,” John said, standing again and reaching for the coin. She was a fraction of a second behind him, but moved faster, their fingers bashing into each other as they both tried to pluck it from the table.

“I really can’t let this leave the premises,” she said, “this could well be evidence of a high-quality fraud that is of immense importance to the assay office.”

John wanted to back away, it was his nature and, part of his brain assured him, an entirely sensible thing to do, but instead he barked, 

“I am a servant of Her Majesty’s government and will not stand for my lawful investigations being usurped.”

It all went downhill after that.

  
  



	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas meets an old friend for a lesson in economics. Cho Chang is working for the Ministry's "special circumstances" department and receives word that there's a new owl master.

##  Chapter 7

London is really many different cities overlaid atop one another, Thomas mused. Here in the city, the young, brash and foolhardy of the financial district see their offices, the avocado cafes, the gym and the trendy bars, all the while unseen in the same place the upper levels of the financial world exist side-by-side with them. The powers behind the throne choosing to eat out only occasionally and mostly in places quiet enough that you can actually hear your guests. He’d heard similar things about golf; how it’s not really a posh person thing but rather something that the posh invented to occupy the nouveau riche while the actual posh got on with whatever shadowy business it is that they were supposedly up to.

Parkin most definitely existed if not in, then adjacent to the latter world. The world of threadbare suits patched by savile row tailors, of home-made sandwiches and, on days like today, an unassuming meal with an old friend in a place where the quality of the food was in vague connection to its price.

“It’s magical this place, isn’t it?” Parkin asked.

Thomas nodded. Sat at their table in the booth they were acoustically cushioned from the rest of the diners. The walls were completely hidden behind a shapeless tapestry of bright densely decorated fabrics. That softened sound to at least prevent you having to strain your voice even if it couldn’t, necessarily (or at least not explicitly) guarantee that nobody would overhear what was discussed.

Parkin was a weather-beaten woman in her sixties, her hair having given up any pretense to colour a decade or more previously.

“So, young Thomas, what is it leads to you trying to drag me out of retirement?”

“Oh nothing too spectacular, but was just wondering if you could give me a quick education on gold?”

“Gold?” the older woman said, “oh no, Thomas, you haven’t been listening to those dreadful adverts on the television have you?”

“No, it’s strictly the Beeb in our house.”

“Well that’s a relief, it’s a slippery slope you know, from commemorative fifty pence pieces to being a raging gold bug.”   
“Gold bug? I don’t think I’m likely to become one of them, whoever they are.”

“Oh good. Yes, they’re rather a bunch of, how shall I say, passionate eccentrics. Convinced that the world has gone to pot since we moved off a gold standard and declaring that some kind of economic calamity is just around the corner.”

“Ah,” Thomas laughed, “well that’s my first question answered.”

Parkin gave him a withering look.

“No Thomas, we’re not on a gold standard. And we haven’t been since about World War One,” she said, “Honestly, what on earth do they teach you at university these days?”

“Right, ok,” Thomas said, “so we’re not on a gold standard, and that’s a...good thing?”

“Well it depends a little on who you ask. Obviously gold stood up fairly well for several millennia, but the world as it is now is not the world as it was then.”

“How so?”

“Are you really sure you want to get me started on this? Because once I start I’m not stopping until you get the point.”

Thomas drummed his fingers on the table for a moment, then, catching the eye of a passing waiter asked for another bottle of the red wine they were drinking.

“I resign myself to your expertise,” he said.

“Well, it all begins with the idea of mercantilism…”

Thomas nodded and did his best to appear engaged. Some sizable portion of what Parkin described matched his own understanding of the world or “common sense” as most people tend to put it. Then things started to get a little more abstract, and after a while he could feel himself drifting away. Finally Parkin paused and looked at him meaningfully.

“So,” he said trying not to make an idiot of himself, “you’re saying that modern money isn’t worth anything?”

Parking sighed heavily.

“No, Thomas, I’m saying that currencies are tied to states rather than objects. Saying modern money isn’t real is like saying the Police aren’t real, or that you don’t believe in Council Tax. You can make all the philosophical arguments you want, but if you refuse to pay the council tax with the fake modern money the very real police will take you to a very real jail cell.”

“Yes, ok, point taken. But what if, hypothetically speaking, someone were to go back onto a gold standard?”

“Well I don't see why they would, even South Africa has never been tempted by that and they're sitting on tons of the stuff.

“But suppose that they did?”

“Well, then I guess we’d be back under the old Bretton Woods System. Only under that system it was the US Dollar that was redeemable for gold, and all other currencies pegged themselves against the dollar.”

“Right, and would that be a bad thing?”

Parkin shrugged, took a deep swig of wine and swirled it around her mouth thoughtfully.

“Bretton Woods fell apart for a reason you know. After the second world war the economies of the world were growing at a tremendous rate, but the pile of gold that it was all based on wasn’t. So when people started trying to cash out their money for gold, they realised the pile of yellow metal that it was based on wasn’t going to be big enough.”

"That doesn't sound good," Thomas said.

"Depends on whether you're one of the ones who gets their share out before it's all gone."

  
  


***

The Ministry, you know, the one with a capital “T” capital “M”, would never admit to this but a huge amount of its resources were driven to a single end, the preservation of wizarding society. Cho occasionally pondered the deeper implications of those words. You see preservation is different to conservation. Preservation means keeping things unchanged, in a perfect stasis from the outside world. Conservation was more helping things adapt to changes around them. Conservation was things like reintroducing species to their natural habitat, building wildlife corridors, looking for ways to reduce the impact of manmade infrastructure while maintaining most of its functionality. Preservation usually meant pickling things.

The long and the short of it was that most of the wizarding community, and therefore the Ministry, was utterly terrified of change. The result of which was that the Ministry spent a huge amount of time and manpower firefighting dozens of small problems that cropped up at the fringes. Intersections with either the laws of reality or, more commonly, local muggle councils who suddenly want to build a gigantic supermarket on what they were sure was an empty set of fields but actually, behind the wards, is the ancestral home of a great venerable wizarding family. Usually they were able to treat things on a case by case basis. A bribe here, a quiet word there. Very occasionally showing somebody a dragon and assuring them that yes they really would be paying them a visit if they didn’t find another estuary to build their container port in. But it was always hand waved, an ever complicating network of lies, half truths, pleas and other private arrangements. The term that’s sometimes used is soft power, and the Ministry were experts at wielding it.

However, the down side was that a spiraling and ever more complex set of arrangements required a spiraling and ever more complex machine of government to keep track of it all and, what with wizards not being inclined to reproduce any more or less rapidly than their human counterparts, this meant that the Ministry was, technically, always understaffed. You wouldn’t know that upon visiting the ministry of course, because along with the general conservatism inherent to most wizards was a mortal resistance to relocating to larger facilities. It actually worked out quite well really, The number of people working at the ministry almost perfectly matched the office space available, to the extent that some members of staff had occupied the same desk for fifty years or more. Not just working at the same desk but literally seated and never abandoning their posts, or so the rumours went.

That wasn’t Cho’s department, though. She’d never entirely come to terms with the make-do patchwork of administratum that sat at the core of the wizarding world. She was bright, and the ministry had been rocked by the dark years, meaning that she was in an excellent position when she joined to pick whatever avenue of advancement she liked. And so she found herself as a case manager in a unit she liked to call “Special Circumstances” but had the euphemistically vague designation of “miscellaneous matters.” Or M&Ms for short.

The unofficial instructions for her department were basically “we don’t know what to do with this problem, please make it go away.” Cho had quickly added a personal philosophy to this that they should wherever possible take an approach that reduces the level of interaction between the magical and non-magical world and, as a result,reduce the need for future intervention, monitoring and, in extreme cases, inter generational agreements. She was particularly keen on getting rid of the latter of these because people had a worrying tendency to die unexpectedly, not leave suitable replacements or in the cases where they did very carefully explain things to their next of kin, have the entire matter undermined by said next of kin assuming that their dire warnings about leaving the barn on the west field alone or ensuring they leave Box 5 vacant for “the ghost” are either jokes or the credulous ramblings of someone a little past their peak.

So the letter from the new Owl Master at the Loughborough sorting office was actually a pleasant change from the norm. It appeared that some attempt had been made to pass on responsibilities and the new recruit seemed relatively happy to accept the importance of owls as part of Her Majesty's royal mail. By rights it shouldn’t have even ended up on her desk, but there was the matter of the money. It probably would have been fine, a quiet word, maybe give them a hat to wear to feel important while they sweep up owl droppings. But once money got involved everything got more complicated. Cho slipped a small bronze pocket watch out of her waistcoat pocket and clucked thoughtfully. Well, better try to sort things out sooner rather than later.

  
  


***

John was on the motorway when Mr Blenkinsop called. He hadn’t ever really seen the point in getting one of those earpiece things for talking while driving so he had to make do with putting his phone on speaker, and yelling at it as it sat on the passenger seat.

“Merkin old sport, how are you getting along?” barked the phone.

“Ummm, well I’ve not been arrested yet?” John said.

“What’s that?”

“Fine, sir.”

“Good good, how was it at the assay office?”

“Well, I think they’re quite cross with me and might possibly have called the Police”

“Police? You didn’t steal something did you?”

John gave Thomas the abbreviated version.

“Oh Jolly good show old boy, I never thought you would have had it in you,” said Thomas.

“Yes sir, but I’m really rather embarrassed, I’m not sure what came over me.”

“From the sounds of it she wasn’t sure what came over her either? Confiscating the item pending their investigations? heavens to betsy that’s a jurisdictional over reach I’ve not heard of since something like Henry VIII. Not that I knew him personally, you understand. And they're sure it's pure gold?”

“Yes, sir. Does it, ah, does it help at all with your half of the, uh, extra inquiries?”

“No, no, ...no...well ok yes. Umm, I think I might need to have a more official word with someone from the treasury and, ah, I don’t think they’re going to like it.”

“Very good sir, anything I can help with?”

“Hmmm, yes, it might be worth asking caroline if she can send one of her bunnies down the rabbit hole seeing if they can make anything of the markings on these coins of yours,” Thomas said

“Oh, you mean the bank?”

“Yes, Green Guts or whatever, I mean we’re the mother of parliaments I’m sure we’ll have a record of this place somewhere.”

“Yes, sir.”

“OK, good. I mean, I have tried Google with no luck so you’ll have to go deeper than that.”

“Yes sir, I’m sure I can go for something a bit more old school.”

“Oh, well jolly good. Keep me posted. Oh, and Merkin?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Be a pal and keep this stuff strictly verbal for now alright?”

“Yes, sir,” John said.

‘oh look at that’ John thought, ‘some of this rope has fallen on the floor in a sort of loop, better watch out for that.’


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cho visits the Eyrie to try to smooth things over with the new owl master and the auditors... and it nearly works. Edward wants to open a bank account and the auditors begin planning a trip to visit Gringotts.

##  Chapter 8

Cho couldn’t take the floo system all the way to Loughborough, but there was a small enclave of wizard families living just outside Chesterfield and she was able to hop off there and take public transport the rest of the way. She could, of course, have just apparated there, but apparating into a place you’ve never been is risky. Partly because of the ever so slight risk of miscalculating your arrival location and accidentally having your leg intersecting with a piece of furniture that shouldn’t be there, but mostly because it tended to freak the Muggles out.

Taking rural buses always took an age but according to the efkairiameter she still had twenty minutes to kill when she arrived so she played an old game of tranfiguring herself into a tree and then seeing how quickly she could walk across one of the fields before the wildlife got suspicious. About five minutes before she was due a car pulled into the car park and a stout man with a ruddy face and look of deep set worry fumbled his way out and into the building. Cho wasn’t certain but she felt like there was an extremely good chance that he was at least partially involved in all this. She shifted into a squirrel and bounded across the carpark and through the front door.

Squirrels work well, they look cute so people tend to leave them alone. They also tend to look quite purposeful which is less good because then people have a tendency to watch because you seem like you’re up to something. Cho had had a colleague once who transferred over from the Bureau (officially the United States Federal Office for Magical Affairs, FOMA). They used to default to racoon when infiltrating a muggle space, which didn't go particularly well because, well, animals whose natural ecosystem is over a thousand miles and a major ocean away tend to attract even more attention than a suspicious looking squirrel. The ruddy faced man was already passing through an inner set of double doors and Cho quickly sin-waved her way across the reception and through the narrowing gap of the closing door. The man clearly knew where he was going and Cho held back when he finally got to a door that he stopped at, knocking loudly before entering. The man began talking, casual but nervously, to someone as he entered. Cho found a secluded corner to turn back to normal and then stalked over, pressing her ear to the crack. The efkairiameter was down to less than a minute.

***

“Did you have any luck then, with your what was it, special inquiries?” Edward asked.

“Umm, yes, mostly. Turns out you were right, this coin really is pure gold.”

“Oh really? By the way do you have it with you?”

John nodded, reached into his pocket and handed it over, only hesitating slightly before placing it in Edward’s outstretched hand.

“Of course this is the property of Royal Mail?” John said, not manging to sound entirely convinced.

“Oh of course, I wouldn’t dream of short changing the company,” Edward said.

There was a thick silence, somewhere nearby a pocket watch ticked eagerly.

“So, these owls of yours, how good are they at finding places?”

“Oh, actually I’m not sure but you can ask them yourself if there’s something you want sending?”   
“Ask them myself?” John repeated.

“Sure, like this,” Edward said and then emitted a surprisingly convincing owl call. There was a silent blur and then a ball of light grey fluff with penetrating green eyes was sitting on Edward’s shoulder.

“Eccles, do you think you could help this man out, he’s looking to get a letter to…” he glanced meaningfully at John.

“Umm,” he said, feeling like a child addressing an animal as if it were a person, “I need to get in touch with Gringotts bank?”

The owl nodded its head and held out a clawed foot.

“Oh, umm, I haven’t actually written a letter yet, but--”

The door slammed open dramatically and a figure strode in.

“There’s no need to write a letter just yet,” Cho said, smiling menacingly.

***

This was not ideal. General rule of thumb when dealing with muggles is that, wherever possible, you tried to get them on their own, it added to the pressure for them to keep quiet, because, well, nobody wants to sound crazy. Failing that the other time-honored negotiating tactic was to always have more of you than of them.

“Mr Saulson I presume?” Cho said, thrusting her hand to the one with the owl on his shoulder. He quickly slipped something into a pocket and took the outstretched hand and shook it in brisk northern style.

“And you would be?” she asked, stepping between the pair of them and fixing the ruddy faced man in the eye.

“Merkin, uh, John, I’m here from the Ministry”

“The Ministry?”

“Uhh, that is, the Department for Trade and Industry, I mean, not actually, a, I mean, we do have a Minister but, the name--”

“Oh, well that makes two of us then,” she said, smiling.

***

Cho took them to the pub. It wasn’t an ideal solution, in the worst case scenario calling in the obliviators was much much harder when you had a public space because people would head off in all sorts of difficult to trace directions and, depending on how long it took to track them down, there was no telling how many people they might have blabbed to.

On the plus side, far fewer people were likely to care and burning ears were a big problem in her line of work.

“So,” Cho said, sitting down across the table from Edward. John awkwardly slipped in beside her, it seemed fitting sort of a united front.

“Now, then, to make sure I’m not repeating anything too much, could you go over for me what you know already?”

“Well,” Edward said, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers behind his head. “There’s folks what can’t use the normal post, so they use owls instead. Royal Mail has our place here for them to send letters to and we put them into the system.”

Cho nodded, untensing a little inside, this was going to be an easy one.

“Only problem is,” Edward said, “sometimes they need to pay for postage, either insufficient postage on an item they’re receiving, or they need to pay postage on the item they’re sending. And that’s all a bit complicated because they’ve got some kind of bananas money system and don’t know what the hell to send me.”

“A… bananas money system?” Cho asked.

Edward glanced around and, seeing there was nobody looking over his shoulder, slipped something out of his pocket and placed it on the table. It was a gold galleon. Cho reached out a had and pretended to study it with interest.

“How exactly did you come by this?”

“Well, we were sort of experimenting with finding a way to let folks pay for postage owing at the same time as receiving the parcel. So’s that they can get their post sooner and we only have to send the owl on one trip rather than two.”

“Ah, I see,” Cho said. And of course confronted with a belligerent owl that’s holding your post hostage most wizards, screw it , most  _ people _ , would pay it off with whatever came to hand, wizard money, sterling, euros, first born children… owls could be pretty intimidating when they wanted to.

“So, it seems to me,” Edward continued, “that what’s needed is either the customers need to keep a better supply of sterling, or else we accept their coinage and issue the postage owing notices in terms of their currency.”

Cho smiled, or at least tried to.

“Yes,” she said, “that sounds like a perfectly sensible solution.”

“The only issue being,” Edward continued, “the need to establish and communicate the conversion rate to make sure that we’re charging appropriately. Oh, and passing Mr Merkin here the archival records for the purposes of the Department’s ongoing audit.”

Cho eyed him warily. It would be easy enough to do, the kind of solution that she’d even suggest if dealing with someone deeply unimaginative, but then again unimaginative folks don’t typically offer you a well thought out solution before you’ve even had chance to really ask for it.”

“Very well,” Chos said, then, turning to Merkin, asked, “acceptable for your purposes?”

The ruddy faced man nodded awkwardly.

“Good, well I’ll make arrangements for a conversion rate to be sent through to you Mr Saulson, I dare say we can work on a fortnightly turnaround, seeing as these transactions won’t be happening instantaneously.”

Edward nodded.

“And we’ll send a collector owl with the same frequency to collect takings and return agreed sterling equivalents from the previous period. Meanwhile, I’ll get one of my colleagues to forward a copy of the archival records to both of you.”

Merkin looked like he was doing long multiplication for a moment, his tongue whipping back and forth a couple of times over his lips before his smile started to relax.

“Yes,” he said, “I think that will do nicely.”

It was all going so well, too well it turned out. Cho was just beginning to relax, began to rise to her feet when Edward spoke again.

“Of course, I assume that this gringott’s place would be amenable to taking on personal banking customers?”

***

“Merkin, what news from the north?” Thomas asked.

“Umm, well, sir. It’s good news and bad news.”

“Right, any particular order you want to handle them in?”

“Well the good news is that we’ve established what’s causing the erroneous entries and we have a plan in place for handling the situation in the future.”

“Ah, capital! Good work.”

“We’re also going to receive a copy of the archival accounts, which should hopefully marry up with what we’ve got already.”

Thomas felt a little stiffness in his shoulders subside.

“And the bad news?”

“Uh, well, the, uh, other ministry that was mentioned, I think I encountered one fo their people today.”

“Oh good, wasn’t Agriculture and Fisheries in the end was it?”

“Uh, no, sir, it’s , ah, something rather more complicated. That is to say, she led me to belive that the , uh, jurisdictional overlap is something of a delicate matter.”

“Oh fucknuggets,” Thomas mutered, “this is some MoD black ops thing isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure sir, but the, ah, the reason it’s become important is that, ah, the, ah Royal Mail head of the… the Owl Master, he has requested to open an account at this Gringotts bank.”

“I, see,” Thomas said thoughtfully, “and, is that any of our business? I mean does our mysterious collegue have thoughts on the matter?”

“It’s very difficult to be certain sir, I’m not entirely convinced that I was following the subtext, but I believe he sees it as something of a quid pro quo. In exchange for his discretion you see?”

“You mean he’s blackmailing us? Or blackmailing them, I suppose?”

“I… I’m not sure sir, with respect, I’ve not had any training in this form of, uh, low level diplomatic relations.”

“Gringotts was the place we think our mysterious bullion arrived from isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, if it’s on our radar to establish what this place is, now might be an excellent opportunity. Inspect the place for ourselves and see if we can’t get a little wiser on what exactly is going on with your Royal Mail chap.”

“Yes sir, you, uh, you think he has something to gain from opening a new bank account?”

“I’m not sure, but it’s certainly suspect. I’ll have a chat with one of my tame fraud experts and get back to you. Now, for accompanying your chap on this visit, I fear we might have to get something approved on paper. Have us be seen to be doing things by the book. Oh, yes, who do I need to contact on their side? Your mysterious civil servant, who’s their boss?”

Thomas thought he could hear heavy breathing at the other end of the line.

“Merkin? Come on man, who are they working for?”

“She says, sir, she, I have a business card, and it says, she works as head of Miscellaneous Matters, in the Department for Muggle Affairs… at the Ministry of Magic.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The efkairiameter is a device for tellign when is a good moment to do something. Literally from the Greek "efkairia" meaning good opportunity. Because how else are you going to make a dramatic entrance?


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The audit team get sent to the leaky cauldron and are given a crash course in muggle-wizarding relations.

##  Chapter 9

Systems of government, by their nature, tend to have lots of red tape. The boundaries of what can and can’t be done are preferably laid out well in advance, with enough separation between the person setting the boundaries and the person who needs to respect them that renegotiation becomes an effective impossibility. These come in both the formal written procedures, the things that you can point to a literal paragraph of text to back up. Then there’s the more informal rules, the kind that are set down by a mixture of common sense, personal preference and a strong dose of “but that’s how we’ve always done it.” These are more the kind of thing where you guess they’re probably written down somewhere but nobody is entirely sure where, just that they are sure they encountered the words in a written format at some point. Lastly are the super informal rules, the ones you basically never write down, seldom talk about and never, ever, even remotely think of breaking. A good example of the first is that you should get written permission from someone’s line manager before they conduct any inter-departmental activities. A good example of the middle set of rules is that you explain the purpose of the activity to said employee’s line manager. An example of the third and most nebulous category is that you should never start a work-related conversation with a colleague that will make it sound like you’re in the early stages of some sort of breakdown.

I was the latter of these that was causing Thomas a considerable amount of soul searching. It wasn’t simply a straightforward matter of did he believe Merkin, but a more complicated analysis. Not only did he believe Merkin, but did he believe the woman who he’d been talking to? In any case she could be sincere but ultimately deluded. Finally, assuming all of this was true and he wasn’t being spun the most vicious and ill-timed April fool’s joke of his career, there was still another very important question. In some ways it was the only question that really mattered to him, because it was the one that could directly impact his career; whether he could do a good enough job of convincing Caroline to go along with it that she wouldn’t also have a friendly word with HR. You know, the sort that ends with someone updating their LinkedIn profile to say how excited they are to suddenly be doing their boss’ job. OK, technically, Thomas position would be more of a sideways move for Caroline, but in the real world everyone knew that his position trumped hers. He was higher up in the building and everything!

The door slammed open. 

“Oh, for pity’s sake get in here!” Caroline yelled.

With hindsight it would, perhaps have been better to fully resolve on a course of action before coming down to have the all important chat. But then again this way forced him to actually have the chat rather than procrastinating too much, besides, he thought better on the fly anyway.

“Ah yes, Caroline, how are you doing my dear?” Thomas said, stepping through the and quickly pulling it shut behind him.

***

Had it been any number of other people, heck, had it been Thomas himself, there would have been glee in this situation for her, there would have been quiet knife twisting. Knowing that somebody is nervous is a guarantee that there’s something going on here that, if applied the right way, could have tremendous propellant properties both up and down, ideally both simultaneously.

“Please just tell me,” Caroline said, “I literally don’t care what you’ve done but I can only start doing my job properly when I understand the situation.”

“Well, you know how we’ve been asking Merkin to take a look into some of the anomalies in the Royal Mail accounts?”

“Yes?”

“well, the situation is, if not resolved, at least superficially resolving itself.”

“Superficially?”

“Yes. In the course of his inquiries, Merkin has found evidence to suggest that there is a, rather more unusual aspect to this.”

“Oh, Jesus, it’s not some bloody MI5 spycraft nonsense again is it?”

“Oh, possibly, but at least not on the face of it. From what Merkin tells me he just needs to conduct a sort of valuation visit to establish the asset exchange mechanism for these miscellaneous transactions that we’ve been following up.”

She leaned back in her chair and sighed.

“Don’t bullshit Thomas you’re really not as good at it as you think. Or at least, don’t do it in front of the public, last thing I need is to throw someone to the dogs trying to defend your sub par nonsense.”

Thomas put up his hands and nodded apologetically.

“Mia culpa. I am not as well versed in the legalise as thee. Nevertheless, he needs to have a further look at this iceberg and in order to facilitate access, he needs official support, that is written authority, which means your endorsement.”

“You mean you want me to put my name to this?”

Thomas pulled a face like he was about to protest but then let it sink away.

“It’s not about culpability, it really isn’t. But he can’t do this solo at this point, he needs the weight of HM Government or he’s not going to get past the front door.”

“You still want him working solo I take it?”

Thomas smiled. “Ideally.”

“No dice. Sorry, but if I’m putting my arse on the line here I do not want a cock-up. He can be part of it, fine, he’s the one that knows the situation, but I want a team of my people to go with him.” She fixed Thomas with a piercing look. “You know, a team that’s going to give me the undiluted truth.”

“That sounds sensible. Although it’s up to you and I absolutely wouldn’t comment if you wanted to keep it a relatively discreet affair.”

“I would not rather. Now, who do I need to liaise with on the other side of this ‘iceberg?”

“You sure you definitely don’t want to think about maybe making it just a smaller than usual team?”

“Who is the contact, Blenkinsop?”

“OK,” he said and dusted his palms dramatically. “The contact is Cho Chang, head of Miscellaneous Matters in the Department of Muggle Affairs at HM Ministry of Magic.”

He actually leaned forward in his chair a little waiting for her response.

“Oh Lord, not them again?” she sighed.

“Wait, what?”

“Excuse me?” she said.

“Is that it? No screaming, no flabbergasted cries of disbelief? Not even threatening to have me sectioned or sacked for harassment or something?”

“No, Thomas, it’s fine. Frankly this all makes a lot more sense now. I was wondering what could ruffle your feathers quite so effectively.”

“My feathers aren’t ruffled, I’m just… you mean to say you’ve worked with them before?”

“Yes, and under much tenser circumstances than discussing Royal Mail postage fees. Please, Thomas, believe me when I say this, we can handle this.”

In the end Thomas thanked her, nodded politely and left looking like he’d just been asked to gargle a chimp’s testicles. There was, it seemed, literally no pleasing some people.

***

Words like “pub” send a shiver up the spine of middle management. The quiet, inexpressible fear that if you let lower ranking civil servants within spitting distance of a drinking establishment that they will immediately interpret this as a high-level blessing to indulge themselves to excess during working hours. So when you are in the position of having to tell a whole team of auditors to gather in a place called “the Leaky Cauldron” without a clear outline for who exactly they are going to be auditing, it’s easy to see how one or two of the team each independently concluded that this particular expedition was actually a surprise birthday party for one of their number.

John was a little confused by the pub. He had worked in the local area at various different jobs since he was a teenager and yet was confident that he had never encountered this particular mock tudor Camra pub before. The inside was the kind of thing morris dancers dream of, wood everywhere, ill-shaped tables and floors that played in that merry grey area between “slightly off” and “outright health and safety hazard”. It was also, much to his astonishment, deeply permeated with the smell of tobacco, both old and new. Indeed, glancing around he could see smoke emerging from a few mouths, various pipes and, in one corner, from the seams of a top hat.

The man behind the bar had a beard that wouldn’t look out of place on Camden high street or on a medieval battlefield.

“What’ll it be my fine sir?” he said.

“Do you do coffees?” John asked.

The bar man nodded and turned away from him. Behind the bar John could just make out a very old, very battered coffee maker. It sparked ominously and the pot looked like it had been broken and glued back together several times, but the atual coffee that appeared on the bar in front of him smelled bitter and smooth and had a hint of cinnamon and some other spices. More importantly, it smelled strong and gave his stomach the kick that you only really get, or need, when working in the public sector.

“Most folks who’re after something non-alcoholic go for the butter beer,” said a voice at his elbow. John turned to see a woman with dark, undercut hair and a leather jacket. Incongruously she wa also wearing a white polo neck shirt with a very loose skinny black tie.

“Myrtle,” she said thrusting a hand out. “The powers that be sent me to meet you and sort of, smooth the passage as it were.”

“Oh, like an informal liaison?”

She rolled that thought around for a moment before responding. 

“Yes, but also, most folks can’t actually go where we’re going unless someone holds the door open for them.”

“Like a cat you mean?”

“Yeah, near enough. Except for cats that can’t see the door, don’t know its there and, in most cases, if you told them about the door, showed it to them and tried to shove them through it, they’d still likely not believe you.”

“I, see.”

“You’re lot aren’t going to like this, I can tell.”

“I mean, it’s part of the job and all, and I mean…”

John took a swig of his coffee and nodded somberly.

“No, I suspect you’re right,” John continued, “although, truth be told, I’m not entirely sure what to expect?”

“Yeah, letting muggles come through is something of a ...controversial issue. I mean we’re generally much more accepting nowadays, but there’s still a bit of a radical fringe that feels a bit threatened by you.”

John mulled this over for a moment.

“You say, ‘we’ you mean you’re a,” he dropped his voice to a whisper, “a wizard?”

Myrtle responded in the same hushed tone.

“No, I’m not, and if you repeat that to anyone mind you I’ll knock your block off, am I clear?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend I jus--”

“--Look, it’s a touchy subject alright. Just, no, I ain’t a wizard, but don’t go tellin’ that to your Ministry friends because it’s none of their bloody business, you understand?”

John nodded, dumbly.

“Where are your lot anyway?”

John glanced around then at his watch.

“They were supposed to be here by now, I’m not sure what’s keeping them. Caroline seems the sort to run a pretty tight ship.”

Myrtle slapped a palm to her face and slowly let it slide down.

“Oh for fuck’s sake they’re probably...alright, come with me.”

John grabbed his coffee mug and followed her to the front door. Standing on the front step he could see a group of people in budget suits with clip-boards and rucksacks traipsing bemusedly up and down the street, counting house numbers.

“Oi! Stiffs!” Myrtle yelled. The audit team paused at the noise and, turning to look at them finally seemed to actually spot the four storey mock(?) tudor pub.

“Morning,” John said, awkwardly raising his hand in greeting.

They trooped inside, clearly as uncomfortable as management with the informal atmosphere of a smokey pub. Myrtle gathered them around a table and ordered a round of coffees. Most of the auditors visibly relaxed when they had a cup sitting between their hands, like something normal to focus on.

“Now, then,” Myrtle said addressing the group. “There’s no really formal indoctrination stuff for this because, well, normally crap like this gets sorted out before you folks get involved. But anyway,” she paused and produced a roll of parchment from inside her coat.

“In the interests of preserving the most high and hospitable levels of cordiality and discretion,” she read aloud, “it is hitherto granted that such precautions be taken as to minimise the risk heretofore averred that the intrusive inspections of the non-Ministry ministries--that means you lot--not cause ruckus, distraction, disrepute or otherwise unseemly impacts on the peaceful activities of those in the magical community.”

some of the civil servants visibly stiffened at the use of the ‘M’ word.

“Therefore it is with a heart of great severity that provision be hereby granted for a representative of the community to impart such knowledge as to ensure a most cordial of visitations.”

Myrtle looked at the circle of blank faces.

“It says I’m here to try to stop you from fucking up, or at least to try to keep your fuck ups on the small scale, does that make sense?”

A chorus of mutterings.

“Right then, first things first, yes magic is real, yes there are wizards and witches. They mostly keep to themselves but sometimes they come into contact with you lot and generates a fuck-tonne of red tape.” Myrtle paused to wave at the gathered company as illustrative of “red tape”

“So three things to bear in mind and you should be able to get through this mission in one piece and relatively unsullied. Rule number one, thou shalt see weird shit. And I am not exageratin’. I’m saying this now so that you don’t come up to me in ten minutes time going, ‘but but but that man has a speaking ferret’ or some such nonsense. There’s weird shit, try not to stare and, if you must ask, be polite.”

A few of the auditors shuffled uncomfortably in their seats. It was like sensitivity training again, only without the faint atmosphere of understanding and acceptance.

“Rule number two, most folks you encounter here are fully capable of flattening you. Dueling is taught as part of the standard curriculum and being non-magical yourselves essentially means that you’re at their mercy. So, again, try not to stare and when you ask questions be polite about it.”

“Rule number three, and boy are you folks gonna struggle with this. Is that you are absolutely not here to grow the government’s role. I literally couldn’t give the tiniest shit how important you might think it is to notify the Elf safety executive or to alert raiding standards of some stuff you see going on. Do not. Am I very very clear on this last one?”

A chorus of aggrieved and reluctant ‘yes’ followed.

“Alright, worst case scenario, and I mean, oh my god someone is going to kill me, type worst case scenario, run and scream for help and, Merlin willing, someone will be able to come along and sort things out. Right, any questions?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Camra is the Campaign for Real Ales. It's sort of the UK take on craft beer. But more old men with unusual facial hair and pipes, rather than young people...with the same.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merkin visits Gringott's and Olivander's and gets a bit of a history lesson at both places.

##  Chapter 10

“Now then, our Edward, are you not at work today?”

“No, mother, I’ve got an appointment at the bank.”

“Oh, are you going to see your brother?”

“No, mother, it’s a different bank, a big one down in London.”

“Ooh, very nice. And are you going there for a job interview is it?”

“No mother, well, not today anyhow, I’m going to open a bank account.”

“Bank account, isn’t the one your brother opened for you good enough?”

“It’s not like that father, it’s a different kind of bank account.”

“Oh, is that like some kind of investment thing then?” Father asked.

“I don’t know father, we’ll see.”

***

It was, strictly speaking, a misappropriation of Royal Mail resources, but Edward had been keeping careful tabs on the owls’ workload and how long they seemed to like to recover after longer journeys. That being an important factor. He hadn’t ever tried to force the matter, but once or twice when trying to send a package, one of the owls he approached would yawn theatrically, close its eyes and refuse to respond to his calls. Typically if he persisted they’d squint daggers at him and point a clawed foot to one of the more well rested owls. Not that this was a frequent occurrence either. He didn’t get so far as drawing up a spreadsheet (dangerous things, records, his brother had warned, prone to what they call “usage creep”) but Edward estimated that the Royal Mail’s demands for sending and receiving parcels was at about a third of what the available birds could reasonably handle. Getting the owls to act as informal bailiffs was probably helping drive that fraction down even lower. Which is to say he didn’t get any real feeling that he was doing anything wrong by asking one or two of his favourites to run a couple of errands for him on the quiet.

The basic stuff of arranging an appointment to open an account was just a matter of sending an owl, filling in the form that came back and returning it. Rather more tricky was figuring out how to get to the bank in order to actually attend the meeting. And that’s where Tauriel came in. Tauriel was one of the elf owls and the smallest carrier resident at the Eyrie.

“OK, so, I need to do this as the address on a letter?”

Tauriel cocked his head and waved one wing in a grand gesture.

“Better to do it that way in case anyone asks questions?”

Tauriel nodded. Edward took a pice of paper, quickly scribbled a note on it and slipped it into an envelope. He paused to think for a moment before scribbling an address on the outside and handing it to the little orange-sized ball of fluff.

“Good luck,” he said with a mock salute. To his surprise, the salute was returned, then with barely a breath the elf owl was gone.

***

The auditors followed Myrtle with a mixture of excitement and quiet resentment at the suggestion that they could be anything other than tactful and delicate. As they stepped through the back wall of the Leaky Cauldron’s yard and into Diagon Alley their faces etched at first into disapproval softened a little into mild concern then ourtight confusion.

John deliberately lingered at the back until Caroline’s team had drifted off to do whatever it was that they were actually here for.

“You think they’ll be alright?” he asked Myrtle.

“No, but at least we’ve covered ourselves in terms of culpability.”

Down the street two of the auditors were talking excitedly and pointing at a tall figure with a hat that was loosing occasional puffs of smoke.

“They’ll probably be fine,” he said, “probably?”

“Come on,” Myrtle said, tugging his elbow, “let’s get on with what you’re really here for.”

***

Inside the bank was like one of the old fashioned ones where they built a sort of temple on top of a great big safe. Lots of marble and pillars and brass trimmings. Myrtle marched John past the lengthy queue of customers waiting for the counter and up to a desk bearing the notice “Muggle Assistance”.

“These people,” John said, eyes still fixed on the tellers behind the counters, “they’re not, I mean..”

“Goblins? Yes. Rule number one,” Myrtle hissed.

“Ah, hello miss, how can I be of service?”

“Yes, I am here escorting Mr Merkin here, who has got an appointment with Mr Tuptug.”

The short withered looking figure behind the counter nodded and disappeared, emerging a few minutes later with another withered figure who seemed noticeably older and in a smarter suit.

“Mr Merkin I presume?” he said, extending a hand.

John took the proffered hand and shook it. Myrtle patted him on the back and whispered.

“You’re on your own now. Just remember, Rule 1!”

***

Mr Tuptug led him back to the front of the building then through a maze of small irregularly shaped corridors to his office. He beckoned his guest into a chair and sat down behind the small dark desk.

“So, as you were saying before I so rudely interrupted you?”

“Uh, yes, we tried to perform an assay test on this coin, to ascertain what it is made of, and it appears to be resistant to normal means of testing.”

“By normal means you mean?”

“Well the technical term they use at the assay office is ‘destructive testing’ which is a bit melodramatic. It just means scraping a bit off or drilling a hole through it.”

Tuptug laughed. “Well I'm not surprised you had trouble.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No, that’s classic goblin magic is that. We weave protective magic into the metal as we work it. I mean after all we wouldn’t want people scraping bits off or drilling holes in it and replacing it with bits of something else, that just wouldn’t do. Ever heard of Grisham’s law?”

“Grisham’s law?”

“Yes, bad money drives out the good. If you have two coins both with the same face value but one’s bigger or prettier or hasn’t had its innards replaced with tungsten, you keep the nicer one and use the less nice one for buying things. Soon all that’s in circulation is the most horribly abused stuff. Again, this is part of the service we provide, protecting the coinage from,” he waved his hands in a broad semicircle, “perversion”

John blushed, “yes, I see. And you do this a lot, putting limitations on what people can do with things?”

The goblin gave him a look that made John instantly regret his choice of words, and a good deal more of the choices that had led him here.

“You’ve been listening to the gossip about us haven’t you?”

John blushed furiously. “I didn't mean to impu--”

Tuptug cut him off with a wave and settled back in his chair. He wasn't looking at John, instead he leaned back and was looking off to one side. John twisted his neck to follow his gaze and saw that it was fixed on a portrait of an older goblin in what looked like a frock coat and ruffled shirt.

“You know it was my grandfather that founded this bank. He was a great goblin, a master metalworker and wise with it. The times were changing and the time of knives and swords had long since faded so he looked to find other ways to put his skills to use.”

Tuptug had a far away look in his eye and John got the feeling that he’d told this story many times before.

“He used to talk about our ancestor, Ragnuk the First, who was once asked to make the greatest sword ever known, commissioned by Godric Gryffindor. You recognise that name at least?” he asked glancing over at John. John nodded and made a note to look him up later.

“Well, Ragnuk did just that. He worked and he forged and he poured magic into the metal of this sword. Not just a trickle, but a torrent, some say he even lost focus for a moment during the forging and let slip a slither of his own soul into the blade. And it was magnificent. It glowed like the rising sun and, when wielded by a powerful creature, would cast unquenchable flames from its tip. And when he saw what he had created, Ragnuk wept. Because he knew that this sword was too powerful to be trusted to anyone. But for Gryffindor he had made it and he could not break his oath. So instead he bound Gryffindor, by word and by blood, that when he died the sword would pass back to its maker; so that he could destroy it.”

John realised he was leaning forward in his chair like a child eager to hear the ending.

“The sword now sits on display in the Ministry headquarters. I dare say you’ll get to see it yourself.” Tuptug’s voice had slipped from excitement to grim despondency. “An abomination to every goblin, to every peace-loving creature, put in a glass case like a curiosity for school children. Still, there’s an answer for you. Since then we’ve learned to be rather more careful in what we let our work be used for and in protecting it from misuse.”

John felt he was missing something.

“Surely it’s safe in the ministry?” he asked.

Tuptug drummed his fingers on the desk and chewed thoughtfully.

“Safe for now, perhaps. But I’m sure you’ll agree, that knowing a weapon, so potent that it’s very existence is appalling, is sitting protected by mere fallible mortals can make sleeping at night a little difficult, no matter how well it’s supposedly guarded.”

***

When John emerged the sky had shifted to overcast murk and the air was thin, prickling with the expectation of rain. Pondering what Tuptug had said he pulled his coat tighter around him against the cold air and hurried down the street towards a shop that had a sign saying “purveyor of fine wands” in the window.

The door opened with the bright ‘ting’ that John hadn’t heard since he had that holiday to Betws-y-Coed.

“Hello here, sir,” came a voice from somewhere towards the back of the shop.

“Hello here?”

“Well of course,” said a diminutive figure, emerging from an office space at the back of the shop, “where else would I be saying hello to you?”

John mulled this over for a second, which was enough time for the figure to cross the space between them, seize his hand and excitedly jump up and down as it shook it.

It was difficult to apply a gender to the figure, it was sort of a mixture of slightly too big coat and a wide brimmed hat from which a mass of facial features and hair emerged, but not in any clearly identifiable pattern.

“Hello,” John said, doing his best to return the enthusiasm of the hand shake, which seemed to just feed more energy into the cycle leading the figure to jump higher as they shook his hand, “Uh, my name’s, ah, Merkin, John that is.”

“Ah, hello Mr John,” the figure said, dropping his hand and snapping to attention. “I’m Endy, fennest purver of wandles for the discerning bizard or winch.”

John blinked, ran the words around in his head for a second and came to a likely interpretation of the sounds he’d heard.

“Ah, pleasure to meet you,” John said.

“How might I be able to help your lordship today then?”

“Lordship? Oh, uh, yes, I was wondering if you could tell me a little more about wands?”

“Cor, you’ve come to the right place for that then haven’t you. What exactly was it you were hoping to find out?”

“Well, I was sort of wanting to know a bit more about, sort of, what they are, how they work and…”

“Ah, you a muggleborn I take it?”

“Something like that.”

“Ah, well, there’s nothing wrong in learning a bit of the history before you head off to school. You’ll be making your first trip to Hogwarts in September I’ll guess? Or are you still a little ways off?”

“Uh, yes, I suppose so.”

“I knew it, you can always tell, very well spoken for a first year I must say, now, where to begin. Ah yes, magical theory.”

The figure didn’t move as such, John got the impression of ‘jumping’ and then it was standing on the counter next to the old till, waggling its fingers dramatically.

“Wand theory. Now, have you done any accidental magic yet?”

“I, uhh, I don’t think so?”

“Ah, well, there’s no shame in that, many don’t, especially not your folk. One thing Muggles do tend to excel at is the old finding convenient explanations for magic without ever having to use the ‘m’ word. I dare say there’s been a bit you just never quite noticed.”

John shifted uneasily and briefly thought back to a freak snow flurry that one time in year 3.

“So, accidental magic is stuff like when you’re really thinking about how much you want blueberries and you suddenly find some blueberries, or you feel really angry and suddenly your aunt’s vase breaks. Little things. Well the reason most of those things are little is that it’s all just whirling around and drifting off and dissipating. Even with a really powerful intent, there’s relatively little it can do. But a wand helps you to focus that intent and then, suddenly, it's like going from trying to draw a picture by throwing ink at the wall to having a pen.”

“OK, and a wand is just a sort of tool for channelling what’s already there then?”

“Ah! Perishing thoughts no! A wand is much more than that. It’s not just a focus but also has to incorporate something fundamentally magical in its construction too. That way the magic from the person is sort of … I want to say  _ animalised _ ?”

“Amplified?”

“Exactly. I asked Mr Olivander about it at one point and he said a lot of things about resonances and sympathetic vibrations, but that just sounds like a bunch of physics if you ask me?”

John nodded, that sounded simple enough.

“So, are wands better at doing this than other things?”

“Other things? Other things? My word, what’s there to think of except a wand when it comes to manipulating the forces of the etherium terminal?”

“Better than say a knife, or a sword or--”

John stopped when the figure, lurching away from him, collapsed into a heap behind the counter with a heavy thud.

“Are you alright there?” he asked stepping closer. The hat and clothes were writhing on the floor and the whole figure seemed to be emitting a faint glow. After a few moments it recovered and staggered to its feet.

“I ought to hurt you for just saying that,” they hissed. “Weren’t it for you being a muggle-born you’d have lost something just now but I’ll be genius to you. There’s some things folks don’t talk about, don’t even think if they can help it, and what you just said is one of them. Just mark my words, nothing good ever came of goblin magic.”

“I...I’m sorry, I can see I’ve offended you and I..”

“You can come back tomorrow,” the figure said, wearily, “but no more right now, I’ve got some important seething to do.”

Outside the raindrops were just beginning to scatter polka dots on the flagstones, and John decided that, seeing as he wasn’t really part of Caroline’s team, the ban on having a drink in the pub probably didn’t apply to him.

He was approaching the back door when he heard a quiet but insistent ‘cheep cheep’ coming from just above and in front of him. He glanced up to see a small owl, its body smaller than an orange, circling his head like in an old cartoon. It had a letter clutched in its talons and after a moment John put out his hand, palm up. The little owl let go of the envelope and it see-sawed down to land perfectly in his hand.

The address read “Mr John Merking, of the civil service, when in the environs of Gringotts Bank”.

He wiggled a finger into the seal and ripped it open. Inside was a folded piece of lined note paper with the single line message, “Thank you greatly for your assistance in this matter.”

Raindrops smacked into the paper making the ink run. John quickly stuffed it into a pocket and hurried inside the warm, dry confines of the leaky cauldron.

**Author's Note:**

> It's extended Universe Harry Potter so not much will be seen of major characters. This piece mostly arose because I'm a massive banking/finance nerd and couldn't get over how wonderfully broken the wizarding money system is.
> 
> This is my first time posting a fic (and my first real fic apart from a silly storm-trooper/penguin piece from years ago) so please bear with/be gentle. It started off as a Cam-NaNoWriMo project and is currently maybe half-finished (more chapters to follow). Comments much appreciated :)


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